Where the HELL are my penguins?

Kidney stones and crazy German doctors.

2012-01-18T12:20:00.003+01:00

It is now three weeks before I and my family are due to fly back to the US and take up residence in Missouri. If you've ever moved before, then you know this is crunch time - things that couldn't be done before, now need to get done and right quick. If you've ever been moved by the Army before (especially overseas and especially with pets) then you know that this is OMG, MY LIFE IS A HOUSE OF CARDS time. The timeline is delicate, and doesn't take to being poked at.

So when the internal right side of my abdomen started doing an impression of the battle of Gettysburg yesterday morning, I was rather concerned it was an acute bout of appendicitis and an emergency appendectomy was going to bring that house of cards down in a slow motion, mushroom cloud effect type destruction.

I'll admit to some dramatic jumping to conclusions with that visual, but in my defense, KIDNEY STONES FUCKING HURT.

Yeah. Kidney stones. One, actually, though it certainly rolled out the red carpet for itself - making it's way from my right kidney to the section of ureter just above my bladder, where it stopped to pose for the x-ray, then presumably dropped. I say presumably because forty minutes after the x-ray that showed it practically smiling for the camera, another x-ray showed nothing - it was gone.

Simple, right? Oh, okay, a kidney stone. Painful, but not life threatening in this instance and actually, my body seems to be doing a fairly decent job of making sure the little bugger doesn't outstay its welcome.

But here's the thing: in the throes of OMG, I'M DYING-style pain, I made the executive decision to go to the German emergency room. They took very decent care of me there, solving the pain issue right away and sending me directly to urology for the appropriate internal pictures.

Side note: the same is true in Germany as in the US - doctors are assholes, nurses run the joint.

The gist of what happened over the next 12 hours is this: See the stone, make arrangements to keep patient overnight and schedule a go-in-and-grab-it procedure under general anesthetic for the next morning. Patient settles into room. Doctor delivers news that kidney stone has disappeared according to most recent x-ray. Doctor tells patient: wait here tonight, we'll do another ultrasound in the morning. No stone? No problem, send you home with a sieve to pee through and some pain meds. See the stone, or inflamed kidneys? Proceed with procedure.
Patient grumbles, but grudgingly agrees. Unbeknownst to patient, doctor FAILS to inform staff of change in plans. Patient is forced to raise voice next morning to be heard over insistence that she prepare herself for general anesthesia. Staff finally listens, calls doc. Doctor changes mind: ultrasound and x-ray scheduled, see stone? Go in and get it. Don't see stone? Go in and look for it. Patient smiles sweetly at staff as they deliver news, waits for them to exit room, then grabs her coat and hightails it the fuck outta there.

German doctors have a reputation for operating first, asking questions later. I hadn't had any experience with this personally, but after today I won't question that reputation. General anesthesia, in case you didn't know, is actually really quite dangerous and should be reserved for only the most dire of circumstances. Since I was peeing (like a racehorse) without pain or inflammation of any kind, and showed no other signs of infection, I made the executive decision to tell those gas-happy lunatics to get bent.

Randy drove the getaway vehicle and with his field first aid training, removed my venous catheter. I followed up with a US doctor on post, got my freaking sieve and pain meds, and now wait at home for the inevitable.

Aside: The Stick Figure Christ hanging on the wall in my room really gave me the creeps.

Self Service Sangria

2011-12-30T21:07:00.000+01:00

I know it's the end of the year and most bloggers say something profound to wrap it all up, but all I want to do is talk about our vacation to the Canary Islands over Christmas. This is probably because I'm still slightly hung over.

Ha ha, just kidding, Mom! I'm hung over from the wine I drank LAST NIGHT, not last week! Ah ha ha! Hee hee... um, ahem.

Anyway, as I mentioned here before, I was apprehensive about my ability to fully embrace the concept of a "relaxing vacation" but let me tell you what the surefire cure for that is: ALL INCLUSIVE.

The view from the upper level of the reception and dining building .

Dudes. Seriously. When you take yourself to the pool and there is a bar not 10 feet from your chaise lounge and it has beer and four different kinds of wine ON TAP and you just help yourself.... Well, let's just say you get relaxed pretty darn quick. When three meals a day are served from mile-long buffets for three and a half hours (each) and the biggest decision you have to make involves deciding which dessert to HAVE SECONDS OF, relaxation becomes a kind of reflex.

The Canary Islands are technically part of Spain, but they're off the western coast of north Africa, about even with the southern border of Morocco. They speak Spanish there officially, but also German and English. And that seems to be where all of their tourists are from: Germany and England. Although there were a few French also. The activities coordinators would get on the PA system at the pool and give announcements in ALL FOUR LANGUAGES. Sometimes they'd throw in a translation in Italian... for the hell of it, I guess. Or just to make us English speakers heads' explode. (It's not just Americans, by the way, the English are equally as mono-linguistic as their colonial counterparts.)

Up close and personal at Loro Parque.

We planned for one excursion by bus to the Tenerife's animal park, Loro Parque, on the opposite side of the island. It was a really neat place that reminded me of Marine World Africa USA (not that Six Flags abomination it turned into), and we saw an excellent dolphin show and less exciting orca show and ate some really fine paella at one of the cafes on site.

The entire industry of the islands is based on two things: tourism and banana trees and even at Christmas there were a lot of both. The beach is literally two blocks down the hill from our hotel (Luabay Hotel Costa Los Gigantes, if you were wondering) and because the islands are volcanic, the natural beaches are made of black sand. It seems a little off-putting at first - like you expect the sand to be harsh or something, but nothing could be more opposite. It's like black silk running over your fingers and although I didn't get in myself, I have it on good authority (Randy's) that the water is clear, calm and inviting.

The room we had was divided so Rowen had basically her own room in the living space and Randy and I had the bedroom. The satellite-equipped tvs came with plenty of English-language channels, so when we waddled back to the room after dinner we could zone out and digest to BBC news or whatever movies were broadcasting.

There was an arcade room where Rowen and I challenged each other repeatedly at air hockey and Randy taught her how to play pool. There was an extremely comfortable seating area at the main bar where we would occasionally have coffee (or more wine) after dinner. There was even a Beatles tribute band one night and Rowen and I TOTALLY SANG ALONG. Fortunately, the sound system was loud enough, no one heard us.

To be honest, the beds weren't all that comfortable and tragically, their shrimp was consistently bad, but other than those two relatively minor complaints, we had the most amazing time. I am now converted to the allure of island vacations (something that I never thought would appeal to me) as long as the climate is arid and a steady 74-degrees. Sadly, I don't think I'll be enjoying Hawaii any time soon. But I would go back to the Canary Islands in a New York minute!

If you're interested in seeing more pics and you have just under 9 minutes to spare, I put together a slideshow here:

Or you can click through mainly the same pictures (but also a few more) at my flickr.com album.

I may be a homeowner, but I still watch cartoons.

2011-12-09T19:49:00.001+01:00

Awww, look. My li'l girl's ALL GROW'D UP!

That's what I say when I look at myself in the mirror these days.

And then I stick out my tongue, just so I still know it's me.

About 10 years ago, when I had a good job and a good kid and a good idea that I was pretty much stuck in that gig for a while, I started to be on the receiving end of a lot of social pressure to buy a house. The market was booming, it's what everybody was doing, and didn't I think it was about time I started behaving like an adult?

It won't surprise some of you to know that this sort of comment made me dig in my heels and strive for ever greater feats of immaturity.

The fact was I was wholly unprepared for anything RESEMBLING the kind of commitment a mortgage represented. I was already committed to being a parent and like, WHOA! This responsibility shit is KRAZY, yo!! Also, I knew that despite my biweekly paycheck, my financial situation was not stable enough to survive a downturn in the market.

I was right. It wasn't even stable enough to survive the next few years of booming market, but that's a different story.

Anyway, when the housing bubble burst - around the same time the jobs in this country started drying up like... like... things that dry up real fast - I sat back on my heels and gloated. That's right suckaaaahs, I GLOATED. Because neener neener, I was right. I also felt really bad for everybody that got shafted in that deal, but it would be lying to say that I didn't celebrate my escape from it. The funny thing is that over the past 4 to 5 years, while everybody else has been taking losses, tightening their belts and just generally watching their retirement go up in flames, Randy and I have been watching our nest egg grow.

I don't know how - I'm not even working and we take a very expensive vacation about once a year - but just thanks to a little judicious saving and a lot of luck (oh, yeah, and a year's worth of combat and family separation pay, but I don't recommend that as a solution for everyone), we find ourselves in a nice, middle-class position.

So we bought a house. Well, we're buying a house. We're in the preliminary stages of pre-approval letters, contractual obligations with a builder and picking out cabinets.

Oh, didn't I mention? We're not just buying a house, we're having one built. This is what it looks like so far:

It doesn't look like much yet, I know. But the plans are convincing, so I'm hopeful.

If you think I typed that going WTF??!! in my head, you are correct.

So how do we get away with this giant F-U in the face of a sluggish economy and saturated home market? Well, part of it is location, location, location. Our next duty station is Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and nobody in their right mind WANTS to live in Missouri, so the houses there are really cheap, compared to more desirable places like THE REST OF AMERICA. The other part is that thanks to a special combination of Randy's work ethic and my penny-pinching, our bank thinks we rock. Actually, they think this because they administer all of our family accounts, our retirement, our insurances (multiple policies) - basically our life. If USAA ever goes belly up, we are fucking doomed. But right now, they think we're a safe bet for a home loan.

The other safety net in our favor is that rentals snap up faster in the FLW area than sales, so if it ever came down to a choice between taking a loss or renting it out, we could rent it and still turn a profit. It wouldn't be FUN, and I wouldn't LIKE it, but we could do it.

So far, we've been parceling this information out like little take-out bags to various friends and family members, and each time I have a mini anxiety attack while the enormity of my adult life bitch-slaps me right in the face. So I thought I'd just blog it, have a heart attack and get over it. Don't worry, as soon as I hit "publish" I'll have a defibrillator on stand-by.

I'm sorry you're an idiot.

2011-11-14T07:40:00.001+01:00

I don't much care for the word "sorry." Actually, I'm not a huge fan of apologizing, come to think of it.

Part of it is being female and as such being expected to do it more often than males. Mmm, no thanks.

The other part is hearing it so blasted often. Everyone says "sorry" at the drop of a hat these days. Loses the impact.

Then there is the infamous follow up "but." If a sorry is followed by any kind of "but" besides the one walking away, it is worthless. Utterly and completely.

I especially despise the "I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel" brand of opinions. Don't BE sorry for the way you feel. Ostensibly, the "sorry" portion of that statement is meant to express regret in the event that one's opinion causes the listener some kind of distress. If you truly regret that expressing your opinion is going to cause an adverse reaction in your conversational partner, DON'T SAY IT.

Want to express regret or contrition over something relatively minor? Use a different word. Step on a toe? Try, "Please excuse me." Wrong number? How about: "Apologies for the disturbance." Someone somewhere might have been offended sometime? This works for me: "SUCK IT."

The thing that makes me so crazy about this trend is that the word "sorry" is supposed to be some sort of blanket excuse for whatever comes out of our mouths. All too often, it is simply a shortened version of "Yeah, I wasn't really paying attention to what's going on, but I'm going to spout off with my opinion anyway." In which case, you're not actually sorry, you're an imbecile and there's no excuse for that.

Apologizing is in itself an almost worthless custom. I admit I don't do it that often. Here's the thing: if someone has been damaged in someway by my words or actions, just saying "I'm sorry" is almost always inadequate to repair said damage. Own it. Fix it. If it can't be fixed, move on.

Owning it is not the same as apologizing, but I think it's often more effective. "I see your pain" is an acknowledgment without the defensiveness that comes with a lot of apologies, especially if you're unwilling to change your words or actions. I fall into this category more often than not.

Sometimes (thank goodness not very often - anymore), I heedlessly say or do something that hurts someone I care about. One time, not long after the death of my infant niece, I said something to my brother along the lines of "try doing all that and being a parent, too!" To which he quietly responded, "I did." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. I seriously wanted to bite off my tongue. What a horribly thoughtless thing to say. All I could do was acknowledge it. "That was thoughtless. I apologize." Talk about inadequate. Fortunately, he forgave me, but it wasn't because I apologized. Yet I still atone for that reckless statement by making DAMN SURE I never say it - or anything like it - again.

Apologizing is an excuse for the offender, not a clean slate in the eyes of the offended. Regret should be expressed as such. There is a HUGE difference between "Sorry" and "I hate that you're feeling pain because of what I said. I wish I could take it back." Or between "Oops, I apologize" and "You have every right to be angry at what I did. I hope that you will forgive me."

Maybe the words sorry and apology were originally meant to convey those sentiments, but the fact is they don't anymore. Especially in this day and age of 140-character tweets and winking emoticons, it is SO IMPORTANT to mean what you say. I know that I've been on the receiving end of some apologies, but I don't actually remember them. I do, however, remember the relatively few times that humans have come to me in full acknowledgment and acceptance of their actions. Funny thing is, they didn't actually say "I'm sorry." They didn't make everything magically better with their words, either. But they did get my respect, which should have a higher value than forgiveness, anyway.

I always wanted a friend that was part swimming pool.

2011-11-06T08:09:00.000+01:00

I did a number of things this week, none of which included meeting my daily word quota for NaNoWriMo. I did get SOME words written, but not nearly enough to stay on track. I'll be flogging myself with my laptop later...

One of the things I did was pay a visit to the travel office on post and book our Christmas vacation. When Randy was deployed, we discussed vacationing over the Christmas holiday because A.) it would be the last time that both his leave time and Rowen's school vacation time would coincide before moving stateside and B.) he would have just returned from spending a year in the southwestern Asian desert and pretty much deserved a freaking vacation. You just can't fault that logic.

A note on our family vacations: we're nerds. As such, a vacation for us includes seeing/doing/learning as much as possible on our middle-class budget. For example, eight days in Tuscany included five different cities and a dozen museums, not to mention innumerable historical sites and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a million miles covered on foot. When people say they need a vacation after their vacation - WE CAN RELATE.

Typically, we put a premium on experiences - an admirable quality, I think, for parents and nerds alike. But that does have the regrettable side effect of precluding a relaxing vacation. I've never taken one of those. What? Go somewhere for more than 48 hours without a flow-chart and itinerary? What madness is that?!

A lot of that stems from growing up poor. Not destitute - I'm not trying to fabricate a Dickensian childhood. But I do know what government cheese tastes like. "Stuff" was always too expensive, but "knowledge" was an investment and that kind of rationale is embedded deep in my psyche. Randy grew up on a farm, with all the sensible, thrifty, DIY sensibilities that implies.

For this last vacation, however, we decided that the experience we wanted most was to DO NOTHING at a place that isn't our home. I'm still having trouble saying that out loud. Witness my internal dialog:

Pay money to relax? This seems counter-intuitive. I could do nothing for free at home.
No you couldn't - you could do housework and FRG stuff and flog yourself with your laptop, but you could not do nothing. I've seen you.
Well, what kind of learning experience could I derive from a relaxing vacation? That doesn't sound very educational.
YOU COULD LEARN TO RELAX, YOU NEUROTIC PSYCHO!!

*ahem*

Yes, well. So now we're off to the Canary Islands for a week during the Christmas break. We booked an all-inclusive retreat at a four star resort on Teneriffe, which may be a little windy at the end of December, but will most assuredly be lacking in the four feet of snow and blowing ice that Schweinfurt is likely to have.

My internal dialog is somewhat muted by the novelty of spending Christmas week poolside with a book and a never-ending supply of fruity alcoholic beverages. However, it did occur to me that this vacation costs TWICE AS MUCH as my first car. Shutting up, now.

Dear Realtors in the Fort Leonard Wood Area,

2011-11-02T15:51:00.001+01:00

It's the electronic age. People are connected to the larger world around them visually, through their computer screen. Military families are often limited to online research since travel can be prohibitive. If you want to show your prospective property, you better get it right online first. Here are some handy tips from a frustrated online browser:

1. Pictures. Everything else is really a sub-listing of this, but I really want to make a strong point here. Lots and lots of pictures. Oh, and by the way, posting the same five pictures five times SHOULD NOT FRIKKIN' QUALIFY for the 25 photos slot.

2. If your seller seems like a good candidate for a reality t.v. show like "Hoarders" you might want to encourage them to get professional help before you try taking pictures of their home.

3. If it looks like the home was decorated by the design team of Laura Ashley and Jesus, get the sellers to tone it down a little before picture day. Cabbage roses and Christ don't do it for everyone. I feel like I'll need a pressure washer to get all the guilt off.

4. Unless you are featuring a specific architectural element, never - ever - take a vertical-format shot. First of all, nine times out of ten you'll get it crooked. Secondly, what are you hiding?

5. While it's true that smell-o-vision is not yet a reality, certain visual items do impart a olfactory experience. For example, plastic on the couches smells like grandma and not in the baked-goods way. Messy nurseries smell like old diapers. Red-violet walls smell like crazy. Just a thought.

6. Take the CRAP off the refrigerator. The single most important picture is the one of the kitchen and if the fridge is stuck all over with finger paintings and grocery lists I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING ELSE. Fair? Probably not. True? Abso-frikkin'-lutely.

7. The picture of the blank wall. Why??

8. Finally, and this should go without saying, except that it obviously can't: if you don't know how to operate your camera, get someone else to take the damn pictures. Blurry shots, shots with your thumb in the corner, dropped camera shots... these all make you look like an idiot and no one wants to buy a house from an idiot.

To be filed under: What the Hell Was I Thinking??

2011-11-01T13:46:00.000+01:00

Welcome, November first! Ahhh, a day to nurse glucose hangovers and start counting down shopping days 'til Christmas.

For me, it is also the start of my month-long, self-prescribed torture of NaNoWriMo. It's not off to a very good start.

The good news is that I've already written my 1667 words for the day. The bad news is it took me two hours.

The good news is that I'm pretty sure I've got a rudimentary plot worked out. The bad news is I'm already bored with it.

See, the thing about NaNoWriMo is that you're not supposed to start until November 1st. It's a 30 day writing exercise and if you cheat, well... where's the fun in that? But that means that what sounded like a kick-ass idea back in September has been percolating in my brain for over four weeks with no outlet and now I'm just feeling bleh about the whole thing.

Kind of like a Halloween candy hangover, actually.

The other thing about those 1667 words a day, is that it has to be EVERY DAY to make the 50K by November 30th. We have a three day trip to Berlin planned this month, not to mention little things like my birthday and the Thanksgiving holiday. I was hoping to ride a wave of initial creativity and build up a surplus word count before then, but evidently it's bad form to hide out in your bedroom like a survivalist in stinky sweats with your laptop when you have to share your bed with another human being.

The problem doesn't seem to be inspiration so much as motivation.

I am SO SCREWED.

Updated 8:44pm: Switched my POV to first person, pumped out another 500 words in 20 minutes. Problem solved! I am a writing ninja!

When caramel attacks

2011-10-28T09:51:00.000+02:00

Last night I got all excited about fall and decided to make caramel covered pretzel rods because 1) caramel is the flavor soundtrack to fall and 2) I didn't feel like cooking a real dinner. You may be wondering what number 2 has to do with making caramel covered pretzel rods, and I'll tell you: Do unicorn farts smell like rainbows?

That's called a "redirect" and it's an ingenious method for distracting you from the subject at hand. Much like making a delicious, sugary fall treat like caramel covered pretzel rods when your family is actually expecting a nutritious meal like dinner.

I was very excited. I bought a huge tub of pretzel rods and TWO bags of caramels. You know, after you've made your own caramel, the store bought stuff just tastes... pretty damn good, actually. And it's way easier than burning off your fingerprints because you consistently forget that sugar boils at a temperature of OH MY GOD IT'S A NUCLEAR REACTOR! I'M MELTING! I'M MELLLLTING!

I thought they were going to look something like this:

Only without all that extra chocolate and candy because I did not think that far ahead.

Instead they looked more like this:

It's possible that's just what I looked like after fighting with hot caramel and a spoon and a dozen pretzel rods. Suffice it to say, it wasn't very pretty.

I used two sheets of buttered wax paper on which to lay my blobish pretzels, sliding one onto a cookie sheet and placing it in the fridge while the other just hung out on my counter waiting its turn. As it happens, cold caramel and butter waxed paper bond at a molecular level. They would not be separated. Like a sweet and salty Romeo to his thin and waxy Juliet. In the end, they both died in the garbage.

Batch number two was spared the cold and thus the tragic bonding, but I foolishly decided to prop them up in a decorative fashion in a tall coffee cup. My coffee cup now has bits of pretzel cemented to it. I doubt that's going to do anything helpful for the flavor of my coffee.

Random bits

2011-10-17T07:56:00.001+02:00

When I was young, Lady Slippers were my favorite flower. But now they just look like testicles. Another magic moment from my youth - gone forever.

Heidi is munching on something beneath my chair. "What are you eating? Is that mud? Why are you eating mud?! How did mud get in my house? WHY ARE YOU EATING MUD?!"

The light went out in my bathroom and because we live in government housing, I can't change it myself. Today's military: keeping women helpless, one light bulb at a time.

The season has passed where I can both walk around in my house barefoot and keep my windows open. It's the most wonderful time of the year!

My mind has always been my Achilles' heel.

2011-10-15T14:18:00.002+02:00

I'm not allowed to tell the internet exactly how long 'til Randy comes home. Let's just say that it's somewhere between vacuum the dog hair off the bed and shave my legs time. In other words, really kinda close. Which makes me unutterably happy, but also compels me to plan the hell out of the next few months.

First of all, I have to have a plan for vacuuming the aforementioned dog hair. Yes, I do. If I don't have a plan, how can I procrastinate?! Stay focused, people! So, there is the "Get the House Ready for His Return Plan," which is less about impressing my husband with my housekeeping skills (he has, after all, been living with me for a while now and is much harder to fool) and more about establishing a baseline of cleanliness so that I can bitch about how messy our house is later.

This is important - the more attention I draw to the massive undertaking of tidying up, the more likely it is that I'll be excused from cooking and treated to a dinner out instead.

Next, I signed up for NaNoWriMo for the month of November, and this also takes a rather lot of planning. Not planning for the novel, oh no, I plan to jump into that pretty much cold turkey.

But speaking of cold turkey, I need to plan on having plenty of that on hand for my family so they don't starve. We probably won't be going out that much because I won't be complaining very much about housework. Because I won't be doing it much. Or at all.

Donna Reed I am not, but I can probably swing Erma Bombeck.

After that is Christmas, and we'll hopefully be spending it as far south in Europe as possible to take advantage of sun and off-season prices. Our original plan was Greece, but the consensus is that Greece is pretty much closed for the winter, so we're going to try for Spain or the Canary Islands instead. More planning is needed.

Shortly on the heels of Christmas is the Battalion Ball which I ~~cannot escape~~ am planning to attend this year. I already have my dress - a fancy black and white strapless thing with a big ol' skirt and a very retro vibe. Accordingly, I'm planning on swinging a 1950s Marilyn Monroe type hairdo with some 1940s Rosalind Russell type makeup (minus the Kewpie Doll lashes).

(I'd show you some pictures, but apparently there is no such thing as a royalty-free picture of Marilyn Monroe.)

This takes an immense amount of planning because these days I'm lucky if I shower, let alone do my hair and makeup.

Thank Dog for YouTube tutorials.

In the future, you get immediate answers to your hypothetical questions.

2011-10-09T11:22:00.000+02:00

Does orange juice have cholesterol? What about gum? Cooking spinach in bacon grease negates any healthful qualities?! What?!

These are the kinds of questions I have to ask myself now before consuming anything. Good news: eggs are better for you than I thought. Bad news: not if you smother them in cheese.

About six months ago, I had a blood panel done because I was feeling a little "off" and I thought it might be thyroid related. It's not out of the realm of possibility in my family and it's way easier to blame than poor sleeping habits. When the results came back, my doctor, being of the compassionate and holistic military variety (that's sarcasm for those of you who don't know), basically told me I was a stroke waiting to happen. Or was it a heart attack? No wait: IT WAS BOTH.

Ehhh, pardon? I know I'm a bit out of shape, but I do get outdoor exercise every day and I eat my veggies.

Let's back up here. First, a little health history. I had a blood workup done four years ago and everything was hunky-dory. My cholesterol numbers were a teensy weensy bit on the higher side of normal, but since my lifestyle has actually improved since then (courtesy of one hyperactive dog), I didn't give it too much thought.

Guess what? Turns out your personal history doesn't mean squat in the face of your DNA history. And mine is full of HDL factories working overtime. Yay, DNA. (<-- also sarcasm)

Look, I know I'm fat. I gained a metric ton of weight since I quit working and skinny jeans are a thing of my past. I'm actually okay with that. Weight is a really poor indicator of health, as evidenced by the fact that six straight months of strictly regulated diet has netted me a gain of two pounds. THAT'S RIGHT: PLUS 2. And I have only had ice cream TWICE. IN SIX MONTHS.

I have to stop talking about ice cream now or I'm going to start crying.

The point is, I've been skinny. And I was a stressed out, neurotic mess the whole time. You know what? I'm happy now. It has less to do with my weight than a certain level of maturity one gains in one's 30's and a severe attitude adjustment about life, but if being fat is the price I pay for being happy, I'LL FUCKING TAKE IT. The prevailing wisdom among the female population in my family is that fat = ugly, but fortunately I no longer judge my appearance by the way I was raised.

Anyway, back to cholesterol. I go back for another blood test in a month to see if my diet is making a difference. I flatly refuse to take meds until I've exhausted every other lifestyle change in my control. Sadly, exercise is a huge factor in reducing bad cholesterol and it may be the next sacrifice I have to make. I hate to exercise. I don't mind being active, but treadmills/ellipticals/stationary bikes piss me off if I even look at them. The good news is that snow will be here soon and shoveling the walk way is a pretty good work out. Also, moving, which happens right after the snow and which will probably make me a stressed out, neurotic mess. Problem solved? :-/

With friends like these, who needs mixed metaphors?

2011-10-01T08:37:00.000+02:00

I'M BACK, BITCHEZ!

The search for penguins continues! Yeah, after diddling a couple of other blog experiments, the prodigal blogger has returned to her roots.

My, I do have a high opinion of myself, don't I? C'mon, you know that's why you're here - my unique blend of self-effacing hubris! And brilliant use of oxymorons!

I thought I'd kick off the reboot with something stunningly funny, but I haven't finished my coffee yet, so a statement of intent is about all I can manage right now.

PSA. (Not affliated with the makers of Underoos.)

2009-07-20T17:00:00.003+02:00

Get your pets spayed and neutered! Seriously!

Heidi is in full-blown heat right now. Right smack dab in the middle of her estrus cycle. Her messy, leaky, swollen, whining, shedding, barking, get-up-50-times-a-night-to-pee, oh-my-god-STOP-IT! estrus cycle. I find myself in the very UNenviable position of trying to find Underoos to fit my dog. (So her little tail can go through the flap! Diapers are too expensive.)

Look, I have a kid. I've cleaned up - and put up! - with all manner of annoying grossness. That's all part of the parenting gig; kind of required. But why, in the name of all that's clean and sane, would ANYONE put up with this level of rankness if they didn't have to? I don't know how breeders do it, and I certainly don't know why irresponsible pet owners do it. Did you know that some dogs can have four heat cycles a year?

Hardly any of the boy dogs on post are neutered. I don't know if it's a symptom of the macho soldier culture or what, but now that I have to protect my dog from every single one, I'm tempted to just carry around a pair of scissors and do it myself! Dogs with testicles piss me off. And hey, you know what? Dogs with testicles are themselves mostly pissed off! Seriously! They tend to be more aggressive pets, less receptive to training; why do that to yourself?

Heidi's vet said not to get her fixed until 3 months after her first heat cycle. Not before. WHY NOT BEFORE??? Heidi's vet is OFF my Christmas card list!

There are books on computers? Isn't the point of computers to replace books??

2009-07-19T15:12:00.004+02:00

I'm not doing a very good job of tapering off here, am I? Oh well.

I finished my two-day class in web design today. Basically it was a crash course in Microsoft's FrontPage application, which surprised me for some reason. Although I'm not sure why; it's not like they're going to cram a bunch of HTML down our throats in 16 total hours. But it was still a valuable class in that I have a much better vocabulary and understanding of how things work overall when it comes to web design. And I can now use the words HyperText Markup Language without feeling like a pretentious idiot. Even if I still sound like one. Almost half the course credit was centered around building an original web page using the application. Considering only a few hours were allotted to the project in class, we weren't being graded on creativity. Which was REALLY TOO BAD because my site kicked ass. It probably helped that I've had a bunch of ideas rolling around like loose marbles in my head for several weeks now as I prepare to move blogging sites. What sucked is that the instructor wasn't even interested in reading my genius; he just wanted to check off the required components. I'm like, DUDE! Do you even know how hard this site rawks?? No. I didn't say that. But I was thinking it!

Also, and I really need some effing congratulations on this, people, this was my first ever official college class. And I didn't die. So yay me. I know, I know... how can a girl use words like lugubrious and gauche and pandiculation and not be college educated?? Because I am a NERD, ladies and gentlemen! Haven't you picked up on that, yet? I get a perverse pleasure out of reading obscure material and eschewing the classics. Okay, you got me. I read the classics, too. My brain is like a bottomless dumpster; I just keep throwing stuff in, but it's kinda dirty in there so pulling it back out for use is often an unappealling prospect. Unless you're into that sort of thing. In which case, *call me!*

That's just me.

2009-07-17T19:14:00.002+02:00

Randy gets thanked for his service a lot; from the couple dining at the next table to the customer service rep from our bank on the phone. He tells me he never knows what to say in these instances, but you'd never know it by his gracious and humble response. A smile, a "thank you", perhaps a duck of the head if the compliment becomes extravagant. He's had a lot of practice, I guess, and relies on a rule of etiquette that he's set for himself to handle such circumstances that would otherwise throw him. Mostly I follow his example, even though the gratitude expressed to me for his service strikes me as ludicrous in the extreme. After all, he was doing this long before we were married; when he joined the military the only war we faced was a cold one and that was winding down. Also, we've not been married long enough for me to feel I've made any real sacrifices for his career, though I allow that spouses with more time in might be giving me preemptive gratitude! Overall, I'm uncomfortable with the expression, but prepared to handle it by relying on the same practiced politeness that Randy exhibits so effortlessly.

What I have no canned response for, however, is the wide, flat brush of pity that some seem to want to paint me with during this TDY assignment. Even people who should know better, who know that TDY is not the same as deployment to a combat zone, seem to assume that four months without my husband is the hardest thing this marriage has faced. I know that some people are just expressing a general concern for a less-than-ideal situation. Some people do that really graciously, as evidenced in comments to this blog and I appreciate the effort and execution. There are those, however, who give me a look or comment full of mollycoddling indulgence, as if it makes them feel better to pity me*. I know that the well-meaning aren't actually interested in qualifying their intentions by learning anything about me or my situation. That the fact that I am quite capable of handling my family during a brief and no-more-risky-than-usual separation is never really calculated in their effort to fall all over themselves to feel sorry for me. That I don't relate to women or men who use their relationships as an excuse to suddenly forget how to be self-reliant and expect that I will do same.

Of course I will miss Randy while he's gone. I wouldn't have married him if I wanted to still be alone. But I'm not about to dissolve into a irrational mess of tears and misery because omg, my husband is doing his job which I knew would be the case since day one! I'd have a whole different rant if Randy was deployed to a combat zone. But Bulgaria is a resort comparatively speaking! I mean, jeebus, he took his freaking golf clubs! But I guess it's not the reality of my situation that many people are interested in sympathizing with. They'd rather assume, for their own comfort, that disengaging from responsibility is excused when the going gets tough. Maybe they imagine that if they treat me with the perception that I can't handle my life, they will be exempt from handling theirs.

And yeah, okay, that's harsh. It's true, but only in a small proportion to the overall sympathy I've received. The truth of the matter is, I have even less patience for the people who do know me and my history. I mean, hello? Where was your overweening concern when I was living on eggs and celery and very near to being homeless? Oh yeah, I didn't want it then, either! Being married has not altered my core beliefs about independence. If anything, it's confidence in those core beliefs that allowed me to get married. The knowledge that I CAN do it on my own, that sleeping alone is simply a state of being, not a commentary on my worthiness as a woman or a person, that asking for or accepting offered help is normal... all these things contribute to a relationship, not detract. Not coincidentally, they allow me to ferret out the silver lining, slim as it may be, in circumstances where Randy and I are separated. I'm not crying. And even if I was, I'm not the kind of person who would share it. That's just me.

Maybe that should be my response.

*This doesn't apply to anyone who has said anything to me through this blog. You guys are the gracious ones whose gentle, but non-intrustive, concern has been such a refreshing counterpoint to conversations had elsewhere.

Notes from the peanut gallery.

2009-07-16T12:02:00.003+02:00

James Earl Jones (narrating Earth): The beach is a writhing mass of walruses, which is a larger prey than the polar bear would normally risk.

Rowen: Not to mention a stinkier one if someone starts a game of "Pull My Flipper"!

*~*~*

Rowen: Why does Heidi eat so much grass on her walks?

Me (trying to be funny): Well, that's what rabbits eat; so she's trying to understand her natural prey. Y'know, really get into the mind of a rabbit.

Rowen (succeeding): Sooooo... what if my natural prey eats a lot of cake...?

*~*~*

Randy: How do you feel about me being gone for 4 months?

Rowen: I dunno. You haven't left yet.

*~*~*

This is my 398th post. No joke.

2009-07-12T14:41:00.003+02:00

Where I've been:

I've been doing this blogging thing, relatively blind, for 2.5 years.
I've used more layouts than I can count. I know more about HTML and CSS than any sane person NOT making money on this endeavor should.
I've talked a lot about what I eat and revealed a little too much about how often I think about sex.
Mostly I've been slightly amusing, a few times laugh-out-loud funny and once or twice really serious.
Readers have come and gone.
I found my voice.

Where I'm going:

In the immediate future, nowhere. Not because I don't have plans, but because I'm a big ol' wuss-bag.
In the not-too-distant future: WordPress. Blogger was good for the naïve me, but (and you have to say this next part with crazy, spy-flick villain eyes) now I know too much!
Diving into the crazy world of blogging with a purpose/topic! Or as close to one as I can get, considering the schizophrenic nature of my knowledge and interests.

Why:

I need structure. Much as I've enjoyed sharing the rambling, incoherent dialog of the multiple voices in my head, it's no longer an exercise in good writing or connecting with a larger community.
I've been struggling with myself to NOT write the things here that are better left private. Sometimes I forget that strangers actually DO read this blog along with family, and the subjects that are appropriate to both are narrowing. In all honesty, I'd love to pour my heart out; I think it'd be a kick-ass read. But I need to either do it completely anonymously, or for a paying publisher.
I need more feedback. For whatever reason, this blog doesn't get it.
I'm good at this. I could be better. I wanna compete with the ~~big~~ slightly larger fish.

Let me essplain... No, is too difficult. Let me sum up:

I'm not terminating this blog. Rowen still has hers attached to it for starters, and I wrote some fun stuff here I'm not keen on sending out into the ether, never to be reread on a completely aimless Saturday afternoon again. (Why, hello there, narcissism! Nice to see me!)
I will be phasing it out with less frequent posting while I build my new one.
I will tell you where the new one is! Of course I'd love it if y'all came with me! But this brand of mostly glib personal ramblings is not coming, too. Glib, yes. Personal, sometimes. Rambling, not.
If you're worried, I promise to not disappear. When the transition is ready, I'll let you know with linkage, URL, and a desperate plea to bookmark, add to your reader, etc.
If you're not worried/don't care; why are you here?
If you have any other thoughts or concerns I haven't mentioned, please let me know in the comments.

Not baked goods, baked bads!

2009-07-11T13:23:00.009+02:00

The return of coolish weather in the Schweinfurt area last week fortuitously coincided with a few baking projects that couldn't be put off. One for the (now infamous) FRG meeting where the wives were asked to contribute a Mexican-themed dish for the soldiers/spouses attending. Having been to a few of these and seen what kinds of dishes most of the gals like to contribute (heavy on the meat and cheese, in accordance with what will most likely appeal to the largest number of people), I decided to stick to my cookie M.O. I ran a google search and came up with a lot of those puffy little wedding cookies, but I was looking for something a little more unique.

Then I spotted this recipe for Aztec Chocolate cookies and thought, Eureka! because what's more Mexican than chocolate, right? I wasn't sure what to do about the ground chipotle in the recipe, but luckily found a hot pepper spice blend at the comissary that does not contain garlic. (I purchased some cayenne, too, just as a backup.)

The results were unique, all right. The first batch was just too much; too spicy, too shocking, too... holy cow, what is this thing?? So I redid, cutting the spices in half. These were pleasantly biting, with just a little bit of heat on a three second delay. I liked them okay, as did Randy, but they weren't universally appealing.

One for the scrap heap, I think.

Unfortunately, I had about the same luck with a mini-cherry-crumble recipe I blog-lifted in an attempt to use yet another kilo of cherries I couldn't keep my hands off of at the German grocery. I didn't molest this batch, thinking that there were about a dozen recipes I wanted to try, but I waited a little too long and they started to wither from neglect. Having everything I needed on hand, I whipped them up with high hopes.

A little higher than was warranted. The struesel-like mixture forms a tooth-breakingly hard crust, and the cherry flavor is overwhelmed by the surrounding cinnamon and brown sugar. They were okay fresh out of the oven and still moderately soft and crumbly, but impossible later that evening. All was not lost, however! I decided that if you smother these babies in a complementary ice cream, say... Ben&Jerry's Cherry Garcia, perhaps?... you get a rather pleasant dessert experience. It takes a LOT of ice cream, though. A lot.

...where people are never more abroad than when they are at home.

2009-07-09T12:58:00.003+02:00

I'm terribly homesick at the moment. I do love Germany and am still happy to be living here, but whenever things get moderately stressful I long for NorCal beaches and a healthy dose of foggy morning.

Let me define "moderately" stressful because everybody will interpret that differently, especially everybodies who freak out at the barest mention of anything less than perfect harmony in her children's lives. *ahem*

Randy leaves for Bulgaria in 6 days. He'll be gone until some time in November, we're not sure of exact return dates. He's not deploying to a dangerous combat zone, he's not going to be gone for a whole year, and he's not going to be without regular internet communication. In short, it'll be like an extra long business trip and nothing to get my panties in a wad over. (Hmm, perhaps that was a poor turn of phrase, considering that from now until he leaves I'd very much like my panties to be in a wad. On the floor.) If I was back home, with lots of comfortable, familiar things to occupy my time, I doubt I'd even blink except in anticipation of sleeping sprawled diagonally on the bed without the sound of elephants working chainsaws waking me suddenly in the wee hours.

But I'm not. I'm in a country where, despite my best efforts, I suck mightily at both understanding the locals and making myself understood. Comfortable and familiar in no way describe the educational undertaking that I signed up for, and which will commence in one month. For some reason known only to the mischief demon who planted the idea in my head in the first place, I've taken on a dog whose sense of normal is more in line with Odie than with Lassie.

In addition, the Family Readiness Group in which I was so eager to try out my shiny new tact-and-people skills is being run by a 26 year old diva who seems focused mainly on trying to impress with her stunningly petulant attitude and breathtakingly incompetent administration skills. My shiny new tact-and-people skills are no match for her. I bowed out awkwardly and ingraciously when I stormed out in the middle of a meeting last night. Even the captain couldn't get out my way quickly enough.

In the grand scheme of things... hell, in the relatively modest scheme of just my own life experience, these are not things to get truly stressed over. They're just uncomfortable and prickly, like a ~~hair shirt~~ wool sweater too close to the skin. And it's summer and I don't want to wear a wool sweater. I want to sit on the beach and let the sound of the Pacific ocean take over, or sit in a restaurant overlooking the marina in San Francisco, good friends at the table. Drive through the hills, vine-covered to pine-covered in a single afternoon.

Of course, failing that, I'd take a weekend in Dover.

It's been a long day, baby.

2009-07-08T16:00:00.002+02:00

OMG, I am so hormonal right now.

Go here and watch these movies. They're the happiest things that will ever make you cry.

No. Just... no.

2009-07-07T22:36:00.003+02:00

I hope BK's former PR people are happy with the blowup doll that inspired this ad, because I'm pretty sure no one else is being seen in their company.

It's not the key to my heart, but I like cheese.

2009-07-07T13:51:00.003+02:00

I just noticed that my last post is dated 4 July and it's full of complaints about life in general, which may lead you to believe that I had a crappy 4th of July, but I assure you that's not the case. Actually, we had a very pleasant mid-summer holiday with the only neighbors in this entire building we actually like. The husband works for Randy and the wife is is just about ready to have their 2nd child and they're so obnoxiously nice and normal it's hard to believe they can stand me but I think the table full of food helped.

And, my god, THE FOOD. I didn't really "plan" beyond figuring we'd grill some chicken thighs I had in the freezer, so when the morning of the 4th rolled around I completely panicked and emptied my fridge to make stuff. For some reason, this always supplies the best results. I made a peach-balsamic marinade for the chicken and the only complaint was from Randy who said it was so tender it fell apart on the grill. It was, quite frankly, da bomb. I had some frozen cooked shrimp that I defrosted and set on top of fresh mozarella slices with slices of tomato and basil, drizzled the whole thing with olive oil and salt/pepper and was prepared to call "crudites" but actually no one asked. They just moaned. There were sliced strawberries and nectarines and this carrot-mango thing that has middle-eastern-inspired spices and no, it's not very traditional but I wasn't in the mood for potato salad. Then the neighbors brought ribs and pasta salad AND beer and there wasn't very much conversation because we were all in a carb coma. Then I brought out Lemon Stand Pie and we all died. The end.

Just kidding. We did die, but the fireworks revived us. And since I know you're wondering, no, I did not get a single picture of any of this goodness because did you read the part where I said I panicked? Trying to saute carrots and artfully arrange basil leaves and slice strawberries at the same time is rather like trying to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. If you're a fish.

Sunday was spent in withdrawls and recovery, but I made another pie and we managed to bypass the DTs.

Don't count your weasels before they pop.

2009-07-04T13:36:00.003+02:00

I'm sorry, Germany. My crush on your weather is SO OVER. I've seen you for what you really are: a cool-weather tease who yanks back her 68 degrees and cranks up the thermometer to 85 in a valley where no one believes in air conditioning and my apartment is like a mini-bake oven.

And let's not even talk about the rain storm of biblical proportions you just dumped on our ass. No wait, let's do talk about it because two inches of standing water in our storage room needs to at the very least be acknowledged.

Here is where I bow to the genius of my husband's engineering skills because while our 5'x5' storage closet is packed floor-to-ceiling, not only was there room for us to get in there and assess the damage, but said damage was remarkably little. Most of what was on the floor was ~~not mine~~ Randy's gear (washable), airable luggage, or plastic storage totes. The only thing beyond saving is my old computer, which was sitting in its manufacturer's box on the floor. An unfortunate loss, but not an expensive one since it wasn't really usuable anymore anyway.

It's always interesting in ~~the projects~~ a housing community like this one to see which people show themselves and pitch in. In a building with 18 units? 7 people came downstairs to assess the damage and 5 stayed to help clean up. The two that left generously left their broom, which I shall return to them later by SHOVING IT UP THEIR ASSES. Because I'm conscientious like that.

Not that it couldn't have been a lot worse. For starters, Randy is home as opposed to deployed and did all of the heavy lifting in our effort to push eleventy billion gallons of dubious-smelling water to the drain in the communal laundry room. This won't be the case in two weeks when he leaves for a temporary duty assignment (TDY) for five months in Bulgaria. An assignment which is infinitely better than being deployed to Iraq mainly by virtue of the fact that, presumably, no one will be shooting at him. But I have it on good authority that the scenery's not much better. I don't like to think what it would have been like to face that mess on my own, though I imagine it would have been very similar to my neighbor, whose husband is deployed, when she opened her storage room door, took one look around and asked when the recycle center opens in the morning.

I jumped at Rowen's offer of assistance by asking her to stay in the house with the dog. This was less of cush job than you would think, given that the thunder storm which caused the flood also caused Heidi's brain to short circuit. At first it was just barking at the thunder, but when said thunder showed a complete disregard for her protest and continued to increase in loudness and frequency, Heidi decided that the safest place to ride out the storm was up my pantleg. The fact that I was attempting to go about my normal evening routine deterred her not at all, nor did the physiological impossibility of her body and my leg inhabiting my pants at the same time.

Eventually, she calmed down and we foolishly took our eyes off of her for five minutes, during which she took the opportunity to poop on the floor. Randy began a litany of disgust, mainly comprised of separating Heidi's name into several syllables and giving each a distinct tonal quality (Hei-Ei-Di-I!!) but for the first time that evening Heidi was utterly unpreturbed. Like, "What? You didn't honestly think I was going to volunteer to go outside where the apocalypse is taking place, did you? Foolish man."

You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.

2009-07-04T00:08:00.003+02:00

I have a post in the works about this evening's reinactment of Noah's flood but I'm kind of bushwacked from cleaning 2 inches of standing water out of our storeroom.

Speaking of bushwacked, and because I'm channelling my inner 8 year old boy, to tide you over I give you this:

Woody's World of Penis Euphemisms.

Because you never know when you'll have to tell some hapless fellow that his High pressure vein cane is showing.

The squirrel root of evil is EvilEvil.

2009-06-29T16:20:00.011+02:00

Finally, finally, finally sweet delicious things are showing up in the grocery store here in Germany. Being from California has seriously skewed my perception of the growing season. What do you mean I can't get strawberries in February?? Of course, this has less to do with California's extra-long growing season and more to do with NAFTA and imports from Chile, but whatever. The point is, my local German grocery is too cheap to import from the southern hemisphere during winter, they'll only go as far as Greece. Which is where these cherries came from.

Remember when I was complaining about my local German grocery being cheap? Like, two seconds ago? I take it all back, because the fact that they're cheap means I picked up a kilo of these babies (about 2 lbs) for under 2 bucks! (Specifically, € 1.29, but under 2 bucks sounds better if you don't have reason to check the currency exchange rate every day.)

I had plans for these succulent morsels of goodness, nature's Sweet-Tarts™, juicy bombs of stainpower no amount of Oxy-Clean can over come. Grand, spectacular plans involving some kind of sweet dough or brandy sauce or maybe both. And then I made the mistake of putting one in my mouth and instantly developed an addiction that would make Robert Downey, Jr. tsk-tsk at me. Fruit, 1. Scarlet's plans, 0.

Fortunately, I brought back up.

The peaches were just a smidge on the not-yet side of ripe which led me to suspect that so were the plums. I'm a terrible judge of the ripeness of produce. California being the land of nuts and ALWAYS RIPE FRUIT, it's a skill I confess I never cultivated. So I left both on the counter overnight while I dreamt of fluffy cobblers and dense, moist breads.

I woke to the nightmare of moldy peach mush. Fruit, 2. Scarlet's plans, still 0.

Holy ethylene production, Batman! What the hell?? The peaches looked like victims of nuclear fallout, but the plums I managed to rescue with the courageous and self-sacrificing act of moving them to the refrigerator. I should get a medal, I tell ya.

The next day I did two things: bought more peaches and baked the plums into a fruit kuchen.

I'm amassing an impressive collection of bakeware in my quest to reach the world record of Most Flour and Butter Usage, EVER. Which is kind of a problem because bakeware isn't typically pocket-sized for storage convenience.

Until today! Or, actually, until last Friday, when I discovered a collapsable jelly-roll pan! Which is only the coolest thing ~~in the world~~ in my kitchen! Something else cool? Kitchen rhymes with kuchen. I think. And finally, to round out the trifecta of cool, kuchens exist solely to be a vehicle for getting large amounts of powdered sugar to my mouth.

Ha HA, wily fruit resistence! I have baked you into submission! Fruit, 2. Scarlet's plans, 1.

Feeling bolstered by my triumph, and wishing to carry the momentum to a crushing ~~defeat~~ tie, I immediately began torturing the peaches by slipping them into a boiling water bath, followed by an ice water bath which makes them easier to flay alive!!

Ahem. Or, y'know, maybe not alive, since they're not connected to the tree anymore. So I'm less of a mad, evil general bent on fruit domination and more of a two-bit fruit corpse defiler. Mmm, doesn't that make the above pic of plum kuchen sound even more appetizing?

The peaches, however, were tougher than I thought. Literally. They weren't giving up their skins without a fight. Which I won, in a knife fight. Oh yeah, I'm evil squared! Only to find that they still weren't ripe. Did you know that peaches turn a sickly green color if you torture them and then leave them out on the counter over night? Well, they do.

Fruit, 3. Scarlet's plans, still 1.

The outer solar system has more moons than a college frat party.

2009-06-24T13:29:00.005+02:00

Random reasons for not blogging lately.

The weather has been schizophrenic. Just when I think it's safe to leave the house, the wind blows in these angry black clouds that make everything cold and wet. It's depressing. Therefore, no blogging.
Randy has been on leave, so instead of sitting around all day coming up with witty things to say, we send Rowen out to walk the dog and have scorching hot monkey sex. No, not really. But that's not a bad idea and now I'm kinda pissed at myself for not thinking of it sooner.
Rowen is on summer vacation. Having her home all day throws off my blogging groove.
I've been reading books. I know, shocking, isn't it?? "Dog On It" by Spencer Quinn was a fun bit of fluffy mystery, told from a dog's point of view.
Fresh fruit has come into season, presenting a host of baking opportunities for those cold and wet afternoons. Of course, I haven't actually baked anything yet, just trolling the internet for ~~stalling~~ inspiration.
My dog's butt needs a hazmat sticker. I'm not sure what that has to do with not blogging, just scraping the bottom of the barrel here, folks.
I'm getting fairly serious about this whole, going-back-to-school thing. Supposed to get a call in the next couple of days telling me if it's going to be paid for. Which makes me seize up with dread and not feel much like writing.

So there you have it. Feel free to steal any excuse you think you can use for whatever it is that you're not doing. It's the least I can do, considering you can't use: "Have been enthralled with the fantastic blogging over at Where The HELL Are My Penguins?!!" as your excuse these days.

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

2009-06-21T14:34:00.006+02:00

Last Friday: Kloster Kreuzberg.

This is the view looking down on the monastery from halfway up the stairs to the top of the mountain, where there were three GIANT crosses with effigies attached in a grotesque diorama of the original Calvary crucifixion. The effect was somewhat diminished by the even MORE GIANT radio tower directly behind them. I got a picture, but it sucks so I'm not sharing.

This is a view from the top of the mountain looking at the surrounding mountains. I didn't used to think those would be called mountains, but two things changed my mind. One, moving to the east coast and two, WALKING TO THE TOP.

Here's looking the other way:

That stone marker is one of these:

which basically tell the story of the crucifixion in a numbered sequence which you're supposed to follow as you tour the monastery. But if you look waaaaay to the background of that picture and see how many of those freaking stairs I had to climb to see a plaster mannequin of an emaciated white guy tortured on an ancient Roman device, I can't even tell you how NOT INTERESTED I was in seeing the story played out with even more walking.

And yes, I'm quite aware that I've just blasphemed the shit out of the "greatest story ever told" but if Jesus died for my sins then why did I have to do all that ~~suffering~~ walking??

Last five out of ten panels again telling the story of the crucifixion. Methinks the monks here were a tad morbid.

Fortunately, the state now owns the monastery and uses it to serve lunch and beer. The beer gets its own mention because it's... what's the word I'm looking for? Heavenly. Randy had heard it was famous and that was a driving force behind his desire to go, but in this case the result exceeded our expectations. I have a fondness for microbrews in the states, so I thought I knew what good beer was. Then I came to Germany and was schooled, son. Then I had the Monk Beer at Kloster Kreuzberg and was graced with an out-of-body experience. The color is this deep, burnished bronze that stands out against the plain stoneware mugs it's served in. The taste is... layered. Seriously, there's this whole palate of flavors from aromatic and floral to nutty and wholesome. I've never had anything like it. It's a nice, comforting counterpoint to the morbid brand of Christianity they're serving up there.

Behind the café there's a few vendor stalls with wares to fleece the unwary tourist. I came REALLY close to buying some stuff, but we spent all our euro on pork roast and beer. So I probably came out ahead.

How often does curried goat come up in conversation?

2009-06-18T10:06:00.006+02:00

I like food. I mean, I really like food. I like the color, the texture, the shape and even, on occassion, the taste. ^_~ But please don't mistake me for a foodie. Or a Foodie, as they are known amongst themselves. Foodies have this insufferable way of looking down their noses at everything that doesn't come with an "official" seal of approval. Like, if it hasn't been vetted by an angry celebrity chef, it isn't worthy.

I especially love it when Foodies start raving about authenticity, conveniently forgetting that a lot of what they think of as "authentic" ingredients were actually transplanted from the Americas in the 16th century. Or that using their over-priced Calphalon cookware doesn't constitute authentic cooking methods for Thai cuisine. And actually? Authenticity is looking around you, using what you have locally and making something awesome. Whether locally means your regional farmer's market or your pantry.

Not that I don't love a glossy, slick cookbook as much as the next person. Or the gorgeously photographed food blogs sprinkled all over the internet. In fact, I think one of the simultaneously worst and best things about modern food preparation is the proliferation of cooking resources on the web. On the one hand, it gives Foodies ammo for their snobbery. On the other, it highlights some of the best stories of amateur learning experiences that would have otherwise never been told. Plus, the pictures, omg! Before sites like foodgawker.com I used to sit in the cookbook section of the book store and drool all over the pages. As you can imagine, this didn't endear me to the proprietors. Now I can drool in the privacy of my own home and only my keyboard minds. From there I can link to the food blogs of intrepid, snooty, haphazard, or meticulous home cooks the world over. Sometimes I stay and admire, sometimes I click away as fast as humanly possible because great green gobs, there's no way that could be edible!

One of the things I've noticed about food blogs in general is how they tend to run the same recipes in trends. A popular food blog like Smitten Kitchen, for example, will run a recipe on homemade oreos and guess what you'll find a glut of on the web for the next month? The pictures all tend to look the same, too, with varying degrees of skill, but since there's only so many ways you can style food to look interesting/appetizing I suppose that's to be expected.

Still, though, I think it's great that these bloggers want to share their stories, recipes, trials and tribulations as they take the guess work out of gastronomy. By and large, food bloggers aren't actually Foodies. They substitue, they make do, they take a look around them and whip up something wonderful. All the while painstakingly documenting the process with step-by-step directions and photos.

They totally inspire me. I'd love to be a food blogger. Except for that "painstaking" part. Also the documenting. And I'm not a big fan of step-by-step, either. Nor of making what everyone else is making. But I like the pictures! And so, in the spirit of food non-blogging, I give you Brown Butter Soda Bread, with Rosemary. Which recipe, if you are so inclined, can be found on Epicurious. That's where I got it, after all.

Rosemary from my planter-boxes. I can't even tell you how essential this plant is. Mostly to my ego, because it's the one thing I can't kill.

There is a trick to browning butter, but it's totally worth learning. Once you've mastered the rich, nutty flavor, there is literally no end to the ways in which you can impress the socks off of your dinner guests. Not that sock-less dinner guests is necessarily a good thing, because eww, but you get the idea. (Hmm, maybe that's a technique that's worth the step-by-step documentation process. We'll see.)

You know why supervillains are so unhappy, Arthur? They don't treasure the little things.

2009-06-15T11:29:00.005+02:00

I think it's time to go back to early morning walks with the pooch. Left the house for a long walk this morning and came back at SWEATY O'SWEAT-CLOCK 90 minutes later. So while I sit here and evaporate, here are some pics for your viewing pleasure.

What does a lovely purple flower have to do with illusion, you ask? It wasn't so pretty 'til I POST-PROCESSED THE CRAP OUT OF IT. I love the digital age.

I like bees. When they're working diligently to make me honey, not when they're buzzing around my head.

Reason #9 to love Germany.

2009-06-14T11:46:00.011+02:00

Germany is the party country. They celebrate everything. My driving instructor put it this way:

The party season starts in February, with Fasching, the season before Lent. We must eat and drink before we have to get serious. So there is much of both. Then, after Lent, we are celebrating the end of seriousness! Also, the sun is shining after a long winter, so there must be drinking! Then the summer season starts, the growing is good, the farmers are happy, so they party!

(Aside: Yes, he really was this enthusiastic explaining it to us. Every time you see an exclamation mark, just imagine a portly, red-faced older gentleman throwing his arms up, field-goal style. Then try to get through the rest of his speech without laughing. Go on. I dare you.)

And then the autumn, when harvesting starts, before the onset of cold, long winter, we must party to celebrate the plenty! And then of course there is Oktoberfest, which is very big in München (Munich) if you want to go, but each village has their own celebration. That is true all year long, actually! After Oktoberfest, the Christmas parties start. Then New Year is very big in my country. Very big! And of course, after New Year (pause for dramatic effect) IT STARTS ALL OVER AGAIN!

I'm not sure what they're celebrating in the festplatz (festival plaza) that's RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET, but I'm glad they are. I'm not so interested in the insane carnival rides (of which there are plenty) but the food is amazing.

(click photo to enlarge)

They brew beers over here specific to everything, not the least of which is their fests, and Roth Bier is our "local" (which I think means "regional") brewery supplying the very fine ale at this particular fest. I'm sorry I didn't include something to scale this by, but it's approximately the size of Randy's head:

I didn't drink one this size, because I wasn't keen on the idea of floating home. Mine was half as much, yet still made me deliriously happy. (The alcohol content is very high.)

Rowen tried her hand at several games, which means we paid approximately 20 euro for 50 cents worth of plastic toys, but she had fun and you can't really put a price on that. Or rather, you can, but you don't complain because for once, she's not.

(click photo to enlarge)

The ferris wheel afforded spectacular views of the city and surrounding farms, but I'm afraid my photography skills and/or equipment were unequal to the task of capturing the grandeur. So I concentrated on more down to earth things like basic sustenance. Take the currywurst, for example:

It's so delicious I totally forgive them for putting mayonnaise on their french fries. Which are actually called pommes frittes anyway, so what do I know?

Did I mention this is RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET? And the food? And the beer?

Guess who won't be cooking at home for the whole week?

I've never seen anything like it! This calls for expensive testing!

2009-06-10T19:12:00.003+02:00

This is Rowen's last week of school, and Randy's last of work before taking some leave, so we're hopping. Up and down. For joy. But we're also busy.

The only newsworthy item I have to report is that the plant life in Germany wants to kill me. Yesterday while walking the dog, who was completely spastic after seeing two horses and magically morphed into SATAN'S HOUND OF HELL, I took a little break from demon wrastlin' and sat down on a bench conveniently placed off the path. Convenient except for all the weeds growing around it. I leaned back and something unpleasant poked me through my shirt. Upon inspection, it appeared to be a completely innocuous looking tall weed; no spikes, thorns, needles or other obvious defenses. Realizing that the weed and I could not coexist along the same space of bench, I oh-so-generously decided to gently move it to the rear of the backrest where it could continue growing in peace.

Big mistake.

The weed stalk snapped unexpectedly in my hand which, the next thing I know, IS ON FIRE! Also, my back is feeling less and less normal with each passing moment. I search frantically for the FLAMING SPIKE OF DEATH that's lodged between my thumb and forefinger, but there's nothing! No puncture wound, no redness, no swelling. Yet I can feel the GREEK FIRE spreading throughout my hand and slowly working it's way up my arm.

Flabbergasted and horrified, I set off for home at as quick a pace as I can manage with Insane-o Dog still attached to the other end of the leash. Two benadryl and an ice-pack later, it still feels like a nano army of burning lances is tap-dancing in my blood stream. But fortunately, I'm too high from the benadryl to notice and pass out for several hours of drug-laden sleep. From which I awaken, STILL IN PAIN. Though admittedly, less than 8 hours previously.

I don't know what that plant is, but clearly it's origins are somewhere in the vicinity of the 3rd circle of hell. So, you know, if you're interested in torturing your enemies, drop me a line. With some full body armor, I'm sure I can harvest a bit and send it to you. It's way cheaper than a flame-thrower but just as effective.

Dinner is served.

2009-06-07T20:57:00.003+02:00

The advantages to planting window boxes chock full of herbs. My neighbors have more colorful balconies, but I definitely have the more edible one!

I don't know the meaning of the word surrender! I mean, I know it, I'm not dumb... just not in this context...

2009-06-05T17:36:00.005+02:00

I have been in the process of searching for gainful employment for some weeks now. I have a beautifully revamped resume, military-spouse priority hiring status, and wheels to get me to a job site. Alas, still no job. Part of the problem is the small size of the two garrisons in my hiring area. There just aren't that many jobs to go around. And my willingness to commute farther afield is directly proportional to the salary offered, which, with my specialized qualifications, just isn't enough.

Also, I now own a dog with separation anxiety and bladder issues. Leaving her kenneled 10 or more hours a day is not an option. Some might say I sabotaged my job opportunities with the canine acquisition, but I would suspect that "some" are workaholics whose sole purpose in life is racing through it at the speed of their Blackberry and I respectfully suggest that "some" can suck it.

To combat the giant empty space on my resume, which increases with every passing month like a black hole, sucking my future into nothingness, I thought it might look impressive if I filled it with some kind of meaningful college degree. So I applied at one of the schools that offer programs on military instillations and paid $30 for the privilege. Then the sweet tempered and soft-spoken admissions clerk/counselor suddenly flashed red eyes, spun her head 360 degrees around on her neck and sucker punched me right in the gut.

I qualify for so little financial aid, I'd have better luck paying my tuition by panhandling.

In south-central L.A.

With a sign that says, "Spics go home" around my neck.

And yet, hilariously, I still can't afford to pay $300 a unit. I love ironic humor. That's why me and God get along so well.

I need a new resume. And instead of listing things like my crack triage skills or management history, I'm going to list these:

Bakes single serving orgasms in the form of Cherry-Cashew-White Chocolate Cookies.
Walks puppy in sleep.
Can snark about ANYTHING.
Taught 12 year old daughter to curse like a sailor. By example.
Able to maintain enthusiasm for new projects/hobbies for up to 12 minutes!
Maintains ~~critical thinking~~ cynicism after hours of drinking.
Functions exceptionally well under (accu)pressure. Or swedish massage.
Can make grown men cry. And not in a sexy, bondage way.
Inhales a tub of Haagen Daas with hurricane force.

So, according to my NEW resume, I'm perfectly qualified to be a deranged, alcoholic Betty Crocker or the female version of Roger Ebert.

Any takers?

Everybody wants one, everybody wants one...

2009-06-04T16:56:00.002+02:00

Behold the thing that will tip the balance in favor of an XBox 360 over a Wii in this house:

Dear Conservative Talking Heads,

2009-06-04T12:01:00.004+02:00

Please stop using the words "even though" right after denouncing the murder of Dr. Tiller. Monty Python were the only people to ever make wink-wink-nudge-nudge funny and your brand of condemnation with one hand while you pat anti-abortion extremists on the heads with other is really starting to get on my nerves.

That's like me saying, "Freedom of speech applies to all points of view, except when the speaker uses language that incites or produces imminent lawless action."

Oh wait. It's nothing like that at all. Here, let me try again:

"Freedom of speech applies to all points of view, even though Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et. al. are hypocritical poop-heads with mouths at the exit end of their large intestines."

Grrr. Argh.

2009-06-01T15:57:00.003+02:00

I don't even know what to say about the California Supreme Court's decision to uphold the ban on gay marriage. I've been stewing about it for days, and I still don't know what to say. Then in a fit of nostalgic boredom, I looked up what I was saying on this blog one year ago and found the post I wrote when California WASN'T SUCH A BITCH. I cringe, however, at my naivete; using phrases like "definitive ruling". Pfft. What the hell was I thinking?

Anyway, it's still a good story, and if you're new here maybe you haven't heard it yet. Let me direct your attention there now:

I believe the subtext here is rapidly becoming the text.

So spoilery it's like the mystery tupperware that's been in your fridge for months. Maybe years.

2009-05-30T22:56:00.005+02:00

Seriously. These are my thoughts on the new Star Trek. If you haven't seen the movie you need to stay the hell away from this post. Even if you aren't planning to see the movie, because the force of my geekery will reach through the ether and smother you in a Trekkie mess.

You've been warned.

Some things to know before I begin: I was RAISED on Star Trek. It is the definitive science fiction mythology of my youth. I watched original series shows in syndication with my dad in my single digit years, then The Next Generation as a teen, young adult. I've seen every movie multiple times, even the sucky ones.

Over here on post in Germany, the garrison theater just got the movie this weekend, so that's why I'm behind the curve on this one. I've been studiously avoiding any/all mentions to save myself for the experience, even though I'm still bitterly disappointed I didn't get to see it opening weekend with "my people" in their rubber ears and polyester suits. Yeah, I'm a sucker for the kitsch, but that's not why I love this franchise. It also doesn't belong in the same sentence with this movie, which managed to straddle the divide between kitsch and homage so well it made my knees weak.

It also kind of made my brain weak, so forgive me for jumping around a lot.

I guess we should start with the obvious, Zachary Quinto as Spock. Tough shoes to fill, but I think he did an admirable job overall. There were times when I just couldn't get behind it, he wasn't hitting the right dry notes, but then he said, "I'd cite Star Fleet regulation, but you'd just ignore it," and I knew he had it in him. Yeah, it was a little late in the flick to be trotting out the For the Win! moment, but it counts as redemption.

It was easier to suspend my disbelief where Chris Pine as Kirk was concerned. How hard is it to play an irresponsible Casanova with more balls than brains (but still no slouch in the brain department) and a giant-ass chip on his shoulder. But the balls-out, consequences be damned courage was there, though that's thanks to the writing, I know. But when he finally got his captain on... Oh my. The posture and the smirk were right on. And because Shatner's regrettable speech patterns weren't part of the equation (thank GOD) the performance never devolved into a caricature.

Surprise moment of kickassery: Sulu as a 23rd century samurai badass motherfucker. Check the extend-o-sword, yo!

Karl Urban: Spot. On. Dude, you can be my Bone(s) any day. Also, you totally nailed that performance. I have no words, I'm so impressed.

Simon Pegg as Scotty was a surprise casting choice, but a pretty good one, all things considered. He had the humor, a much more accurate accent, but lacked the inherent warmth Doohan brought to the roll. And yeah, yeah, I get that these guys are their own actors bringing their own spins to the characters, but that squishy warmheartedness was an integral part of Scotty's make up. Pegg's on-screen time wasn't long enough for me to fret over the lack, however, and I did enjoy the comic relief.

Zoe Saldana was good. Uhura always got short shrift as a character anyway, so I thought Saldana did a fine job making her a stronger presence.

My last casting comment is regarding Sarek, Spock's father. I should probably just go on record as being completely biased here. The original actor in the roll, Mark Lenard, just did it for me. In a big way. Don't know why and please don't tell my husband. (I was actually really upset when he died in 1996.) But obviously, even if he were still alive he couldn't play a younger version of himself so there had to be some sort of replacement. I don't hate the new guy. And that's as much praise as I can give right now.

Nit-picking: What is UP with the "red matter"? A giant gumball? Puh-leeeez. C'mon Abrams, that was a low-ball pitch and you know it. Completely distracting. I hated it. Also, gratuitous upside-down camera panning. The only time that worked was the pull out from the bridge window, down under the ship and back up to catch the Enterprise filling the frame and the action in the back ground. Every other time made me reach for the dramamine.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole, Uhura/Spock romance. I mean, left field, anyone? The chemistry between the actors was pretty hot, though, which is why I'm not sure how I feel about it instead of being totally weirded out.

Chief Engineer Olsen. Oh, stupid man. Should have never put on the red suit.

Still not sure how I feel about altered history. I have a lot invested in the original, TNG and cinema versions of the mythology. And then there’s the whole argument about what you can and can’t do with time travel story lines. Personally, I’m of the opinion that you can do whatever the hell you want because nobody really knows, now do they? And if it serves the story in a creative way and doesn’t flat out break the rules of the universe in which your story is set, go for it. I’m not squicking over the improbability of the physics, I’m squicking over the “loss” of the “history” in the mythology that defined my formative years. It may take me a while to reconcile the complete AWESOMENESS of the most visually stunning, action-gasmic Star Trek movie to date with that loss. But something tells me I’ll get over it.

Pretty much sums up my day.

2009-05-30T12:53:00.001+02:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I never knew I could learn so much... now just to retain it!

2009-05-29T09:13:00.006+02:00

I recently joined the Flickr group "Dogs!Dogs!Dogs!" and since I became their 43,958th member, it was brought home to me that talking about your dog is in all the boring ways equivalent to talking about your kid. (Except that the dog can't read this blog and take me to task later for embarrassing her.) So I'm just going to go ahead and apologize because there is absolutely nothing else going on right now. Unless you're more interested in the mowing habits of the landscape company Schweinfurt Garrison contracts with. No? Okay then.

I finally got Heidi into the vet on post, an office whose primary mission is to treat military working dogs, but which also makes itself available to military family pets. It's staffed by a very nice German lady who was mightily impressed with the fact that I walk Heidi FIVE MILES EVERY DAY.

Did you catch that? Here, let me say it again: FIVE MILES EVERY DAY.

For those of you who have cause or motivation to get off your asses every day anyway, you're probably all, "meh". But for over a year now I have had neither of those things, so it's a big deal. Not that the vet cares at all for my causes or motivation, I just don't think she sees a lot of responsible American pet owners in her office.

Then I shot my good impression all to hell when I failed to recognize the fully engorged tick that had evidently been feeding off my poor dog for over a week. "That's a tick?" Why yes, it is; and that's a disgusted look from both your vet and your dog.

I did learn several handy tricks, however, like how to clip her toenails and clean her ears. How to recognize her first heat cycle so I can make a spaying appointment for 90 days later and can I just say, GROSS! Relating the symptoms to Randy caused him to shudder and agonize over the possibility that all three female entities in this house could possibly hit the same cycle AT THE SAME TIME. He's right now arranging space in the storage room for a cot and coffee machine.

On the home front, we've had a couple of positive breakthroughs. Heidi now gets in her crate at night without being coaxed, though she will give a token whine when all the lights go out. She's finally starting to understand that there is a signal for "going out" and although she got it a little confused today, she did try and I count that as progress. Then we went outside for our morning walk and in her glee to terrorize a small poodle, completely disregarded all her learned commands and the laws of physics. I'm pretty sure she was trying to turn herself inside out. Getting her back home was like walking a mexican jumping bean. With ADHD. On crack.

Between that and two straight days of solid baking, I'm knackered. What say we end this post on a more serene note, and then I'll go take a nap?

Oh My Ganache!

2009-05-27T20:17:00.004+02:00

I could never be a food blogger. I see pictures like this and my brain just sort of goes all Homer Simpson.

Guhhhhh...

Also, I don't care very much for presentation. Probably has something to do with my tendency to smell chocolate and inhale it in 4.6 seconds or less. Not a lot of time for the looky-loos, yeah? Which is not to say I can't cook, because I can. Check this mad measuring action:

Rowen picked her cake for her birthday tomorrow, something titled Lethal Peppermint Chocolate Heart Attack on a Plate in a Drunken Daze. Okay, not really. Except for the Peppermint Chocolate part. And the Lethal.

Here's where I "floured" the pans with cocoa powder so the chocolate cake wouldn't come out all white. This seems suspiciously like a Martha Stewart thing to do, so I'd appreciate it if you'd just keep that to yourselves.

Also, it's where I pretty much gave up on taking "process" pictures, because who can add buttermilk and eggs and oil and... uh, A BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF and still remember to take pictures?? (Talented and popular food bloggers, that's who.) Not to mention the constant threat of getting chocolate on my camera. I love photography and I love chocolate, but even I know the two don't mix in the literal sense.

Oh man, I wish you guys could smell this:

Here's where a large portion of the "Peppermint" part comes in. He he. Say that a few times really fast, will you? Portion of the peppermint part, portion of the peppepperminah...

Did I mention the secret ingredient is peppermint schnapps?

The use of a large, quality serrated knife is very important for making the tops of cakes level. Also important? Abstaining from the "secret ingredient" whilst wielding said knife.

What can I say about this, other than pointing to the title?

Uh..., this too.

Now the only thing we have to do is wait until tomorrow to HORK IT DOWN!

Good thing I have few a "leftovers" from the baking process.

Randy bought the booze yesterday, apologizing for not finding a smaller bottle and that's when I introduced myself: "Hi, I'm your wife, have we met??"

PSA

2009-05-27T10:31:00.004+02:00

I don't imagine my regular commenters will be very interested in this, but if you know someone who might be, or if you're a comic-loving lurker (and if so, WHY?? Say hello, spread the geek-love!) check out the For Sale gallery of my friend, Mirth181:

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=38070

He has many fantastic original sketches, splash pages, etc., by some exceptional and well-known artists. Everything in the above link is potentially for sale, though specific pieces are going up on Ebay tomorrow (same user name, I believe). Mirth181 is himself an exceptional artist, currently trying to fund another semester at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. If this is your thing, do a good deed AND acquire some amazing original art: contact him through the above link or message me and I'll put you in touch.

It's like petting the dog, but more purple.

2009-05-23T08:50:00.004+02:00

Good morning! It actually is a pretty good morning despite the fact that I woke up to stinky puppy presents right in front of the door. I actually count this as progress because at least they were in the correct general direction, rather than in the middle of the hallway.

We are "crate-training" our dog, a process not unlike getting your toddler to sleep in their big-girl bed, if the big-girl bed more closely resembled prison. Heidi's previous owner allowed her to sleep in the bed so Heidi is understandably unsure about this whole, sleep-by-herself process. She expresses this confusion with high-pitched screeching whines the likes of which make my ears bleed. My one concession to her argument is allowing her to lay down on a pad in the bedroom after her first morning outing to relieve herself. Heidi now insists that first morning outing needs to be at 4 am, instead of 5. I'm not sure whether to strangle her, or award her a diploma. Anyway, if I shortchange her on the first outing, I'm liable to be the lucky recipient of gifts from her... place which is considerably posterior to her heart. Yay, me.

If you're still reading this after hearing all about my dog's bowel habits, you deserve a reward! Would you like to come on our weekend morning walk? Yes? Okay, but put your boots on, it's a little muddy after last night's thunder storms.

This is the path we take in the evenings and on weekends when only one gate of Askren Manor is open. To the left is a creek and farther along to the right are several sports fields, from ~~soccer~~ Fuβball to tennis to track. Germans love their sports.

This is the city of Schweinfurt's well-meaning attempt to keep animals (and presumably, people) from falling into the creek. Well-meaning, but not well-executed. This is one of the few places where the fence hasn't itself fallen into the creek.

I wish I had taken my camera last weekend when we saw an honest-to-god, REAL LIVE hedgehog just sitting out on the path! It was so adorable that I was completely distracted from Heidi throwing up on my shoes. Um, I think I just remembered why I didn't take my camera that day.

It is really hard to get the exposure right on a black and white dog. Just sayin'.

Heidi has not yet learned that these do NOT taste good.

Or that these make her sneeze. Maybe I'll hold off on that diploma, after all.

You don't eat crackers in the bed of your future!

2009-05-20T14:00:00.005+02:00

How old are your dishes?

I know, it's a weird question, but I have to ask because mine are 12 years old. With bits and clearance pieces and the odd hand-me-downs thrown in. Twelve years, you might recall, is also the age of my child. My dad bought those dishes for me, black stoneware out of the JCPenny's catalogue, service for four, when I was pregnant and sleeping on the floor because I had the bed Rowen was conceived in incinerated. Dad also bought me a new bed, because he's cool like that. I had a dream of a black and white kitchen. Never realized, mind you, but the memory of that dream was preserved for me in those dishes long after I WOKE UP.

When Randy and I got married, we had a tiny, informal ceremony on his parents' back porch and opted not to register. Between my stuff and his, not to mention the fact that hardly anybody knew we were even together, it seemed like the height of conceit to ask for expensive gifts. Besides which, as I may have mentioned before, I'm a picky bitch. Anybody who holds out OVER A YEAR for a butter dish that's "just right" should not expect gifts. And perhaps should be medicated, but let's not get into that just now, mm'kay?

Anyway, the day finally came when I had more broken, chipped or cracked dishes than I had whole. That day was over a year ago, but did I mention that I was picky? The day that's really important here is the one on which I found these on Macy's website:

Lust at first sight. Then love when I saw they were ON SALE. I don't know if you can tell from the photos, but I did a mix-n-match of the different styles offered in the same line. It looks like Tuscany threw up on my table.

The black and white kitchen dream may be dead, but the dream of service for eight... that CAN come true!

The fact that I can't begin to fit eight people around my dinette table is NOT RELEVANT! Also, even on sale, I couldn't afford all the extra stuff I was drooling over; the scrolled-edge bread platter, the gorgeous pitcher, the oil decanter... none of which do I technically have room for, but I'd be willing to put them in random places around the house because they're SO PRETTY.

In fact, I can't even bear to put them away yet because I'm still drooling over them.

Also, it occurs to me that they all have to be washed first.

They might be on the table for a while.

By the way...

2009-05-18T09:33:00.002+02:00

This is what we were doing while Heidi was having her explosion at home:

Good Grief!

2009-05-17T00:07:00.003+02:00

Greetings! This post is coming to you from the first 10 minutes of Sunday morning, Greenwich Mean Time +1. Because evidently, if you buy one of those little puzzle balls for dogs where you drop in a handful of treats and make the opening really tiny so the dog has to figure out how to get the treats out and it's supposed to keep them occupied for HOURS in their crate while you go shopping for yet more dog crap, ~~your~~ my dog will act all stupid and whiney like ~~they~~ she can't figure it out but really she's all over that shit and will gobble up the entire contents in the first five minutes after you leave. What does that have to do with blogging at midnight, you ask? Because when you combine an ill-advised handful of treats with an otherwise smart dog who just doesn't know when to quit you get canine barfing and diarrhea and oh what fun that is.

Truthfully, it could be any combination of things she's eaten in the past 7 days, including the two miles of salad bar she seems to consider her walks. Dude, you're a beagle. You're supposed to eat rabbits, not their food! Anyway, we had two incidents today of increasing severity. Randy had to hose out kennel, blankets and toys TWICE. I offered to switch with him, I'd hose the kennel and he could wash the dog, but for some reason he declined. I can't imagine why, since smelling like wet dog is the new Paris fashion fragrance of the spring collection. He did, however, graciously offer to work in shifts as we sit up all night with our sick dog, whom we now affectionately call "Squirty". I'm taking the first shift, hence the incomprehensible midnight blogging. Which is almost as bad as drunk posting, but not quite as much fun.

Day 2; some observations.

2009-05-11T10:58:00.003+02:00

Yesterday was such a fabulous day all around that it makes sense I woke up with a monster headache this morning. But I made a commitment to walk Heidi first thing in the morning, so that's what I did. At 5 am. In the pouring rain. And me with no rain gear. Because I'm committed. Or should be.

It's not valor, don't get me wrong. She's just a bazillion times more manageable when she's had her little legs walked off, so I figure why not set up my day with a more manageable dog? And now that we've crossed the threshold of the first 24 hours, I have some observations.

Heidi does NOT like standing water. Rain is okay, as long as she doesn't have to put her dainty paws in any puddles. Not liking the splattered, muddy dog scenario so much, I'm okay with that. Of course, it also means that she's not thrilled with the idea of a bath, but she stood still during one last night for Randy, of course.
Which brings me to my next observation. There are now THREE female entities in this house entirely besotted with that man. Heidi bonded with him instantly, even BEFORE he laid down on the floor and let her lick his nose off, so I'm not sure what his secret is but it's an issue when she decides that, actually? She'd rather not sit and stay for me. Especially on the wet ground, because if there's anything worse than putting one puppy toe in a puddle, it's putting her delicate rump on the cold, wet ground. Frikkin' princess.
Although I have noticed that tightening my stomach muscles when I give a command gets a more prompt response. Better than a home gym, is my dog.
She has lovely brown eyes.
I'm waiting for the previous owner to mail Heidi's vet records before I set her up with an appointment at the local vet, but might have to brave a toenail clipping before then. She's still jumping when she gets excited. Ouch.
Her ears are the softest thing I've ever rubbed my cheek over.
She's not interested in any of the toys she brought with her except for one ridiculously large rawhide bone. On the one hand, yay, because there's no room in the house to "play". On the other, I seriously hope she doesn't decide that one of the items on our many shelves holds the key to her puppy heart.
I need a nap.
We're going to need to work out a home kennel situation for her, and right quick. She HATES the one she came to us with and whined pretty badly both yesterday evening when we went out to dinner and last night when we put her in there to sleep. For one thing the kennel is too small for her and for another it's the same one the previous owner brought her to Germany from the States in. I doubt she "remembers" the trauma of flying over in it, but she's definitely in the habit of hating the thing. And until I'm sure she's not going to get up in the middle of the night and shit in various corners of my house, she's sleeping in a kennel. Not to mention when we need to leave her home for something.
I think she needs to go out. Now.

We need a furry, moist avenger like you on the team!

2009-05-10T14:44:00.007+02:00

Happy Mom's Day to all the wonderful moms out there! Ah, hell with it, I'm in a good mood... Happy Mom's Day to all the crappy moms out there, too!

Most of you don't know this but I've been afflicted with a terrible illness for quite some time now. It's horrible, and completely untreatable by conventional methods. Symptoms include a dry nose.

Yes, I have puppy lust.

Fortunately, there IS an unconventional treatment, and her name is Heidi:

So far, Heidi does one thing really awesomely: constant motion. Hence the blurry shots.

Heidi is a 9 month old beagle-lab mix who was originally adopted by someone utterly unprepared to handle a dog who, um, breathes. She's supposedly a hyperactive dog who doesn't listen, but so far she's learned to heel (mostly), sit (9 times out of 10), and stay out of the kitchen. We've had her for 6 hours.

In typical female fashion, she thinks Randy hangs the moon which must be made of cheese and maybe if she attaches herself to his heels she'll get a bite. Rowen, whose previous experience with dogs is singing to my cousin's chihuahua, has acquitted herself spectacularly well in terms of maintaining some kind of authority in the face of all that CUTENESS.

Now, this may just all be further evidence of the last vestiges of my sanity fleeing the premises. I've taken Heidi for two walks already in an effort to tire her out and the only result is I'm typing this from a prone position. But despite the fact that she stinks like... I don't even know what that stench is, but thankfully she's not afraid of the bathtub... and I have to watch her like a hawk because she's not fully housebroken and I might bankrupt us in the purchase of treats and toys,

I'm totally in love.

Whip out those weird instruments of science and probe away!

2009-05-08T10:22:00.008+02:00

A recent facebook conversation I had went from naked Jessica Biel to treatments for radiation poisoning in six moves. I should be banned from the internet.

But since I'm not! Here are my thoughts on a few recent headlines to fill the void left by the absence of real life stimuli:

Pope begins mid-east pilgrimage. Because "pilgrimage" sounds way better than "crusade", which still makes people think of the Templar Knights whose flag was a red cross on a white background, the exact opposite of Switzerland's flag, a white cross on a red background and isn't it Swiss guards who handle the personal security of the Pope? So clearly, the Vatican PR team is avoiding embarrassing holy war gaffs with careful wording. Because a catholic pope traveling with a team of well trained security forces in joker outfits would normally look like an invasion by The Village People on acid, as if THAT'S not going to scare the shit of the muslims. But "pilgrimage" makes everything alright.

Also, I love the fact that the pope issues "papal bulls"; to which I always respond, "Yes. Yes it is."

Will right-brainers rule this century? 'Bout damn time. As a left-hander, I for one am still scarred by having to sit sideways in school desks designed for right-handed people. And I broken heartedly watch my daughter's valiant struggle with scissors that refuse to cut in her little left hand. VENGEANCE WILL BE MINE! THIS CENTURY!

U.S. banks race to fill $74.6 billion stress test hole. One strategy implemented by Bank of America is to PRETEND to close out your savings account when you're preparing to leave the country, but actually leave ONE PENNY in there and then charge an exponentially increasing service charge on your account. Then keep you on hold for an indeterminate amount of time when you call them on INTERNATIONAL DIALING RATES and receive a kick-back from the phone company to whom you paid $50 EUROS trying to solve this accounting "error". And then it starts all over again when you get a call from your father-in-law telling you that another service charge just showed up in the mail that's still being forwarded to him despite your filing another change of address months ago. OMG! The Post Office is in on it, too!

And finally: Controversial doctor unveils corpse sex exhibition. In Berlin. Dudes, I LIVE in this country right now. Awesome.

She canna take much more, Cap'n!

2009-05-06T22:02:00.007+02:00

So I was complaining to Randy that I can't BELIEVE I'm going to miss the new Star Trek movie during its theater run and he said to me that there is a small theater on post and they'll probably run it there and I gave him a look like I'd just bitten into a rotten lemon and said, "It's not the same."

And then he asked me why not and I had to explain that seeing a movie with a crowd of like-minded individuals was an experience in and of itself and can't be fabricated with a bunch of bored soldiers and/or their spouses who are simply tired of staring at their small screens at home. Then Randy gave ME a look like I had bitten into a rotten lemon and why the hell would I do something like that so I had to go a step further and remind him that fans are a breed apart and then I wailed "THOSE ARE MY PEOPLE! I SHOULD BE WITH THEM!"

When his cheeks stopped fluttering from the gust of wind driven by my outburst he just sort of stared at me for a minute before asking, "You're not dressing up, are you?" And that annoyed me so I gave him a Vulcan nerve pinch.

New favorite internet thingie.

2009-05-05T21:12:00.002+02:00

2 Hot Girls in the Shower.

Because who doesn't love hot girls in the shower? Also, they made me laugh out loud.

I am on a big power trip, and you are coming with me!

2009-05-05T20:02:00.002+02:00

It is now after 8pm my time and I'm just now realizing that it's Cinco de Mayo. Not that the date holds particular significance for me, just that every web site I've visited, every receipt I've received today, every human interest local news story (local as in Army-Europe) have all pointed that out to me. But because my analog watch with it's little numbered date spinner runs 1 thru 31 and last month only had 30 days, it says "4". And such is the power of my hubris that it didn't even occur to me to question it DESPITE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY.

Attention Techno-geniuses!

2009-05-05T10:02:00.003+02:00

I meant to post this on May Day, since it's a cry for help, but that would take forethought and planning and a level of organization that I just cannot summon right now.

Here's the scoop: I'm becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Blogger as a platform for this blog. It could be a case of wanting what all the other cool kids are using, but I think it's more about wanting more control over the "look" of my content.

To make these kind of major changes, I'm going to have to school myself in the art of HTML and CSS coding. Given the plethora of materials out there (I'm thinking specifically of the ...for Dummies series, ha!), I don't see this as a huge obstacle, just a time consuming one.

Also, rudimentary research has led me to believe it's going to require some kind of monetary investment, though not a huge one since I don't need the kind of bandwidth or storage that a... say, popular blogger would need.

This whole idea is less about readership (although that does factor into it) and more about personalizing something that is so... well, personal.

I welcome input from the knowledgeable among you (Legion, this would be your time to shine), even for something as basic as pointing me in the direction of the proper research materials. Remember that I don't have a Barnes & Nobles down the street, so necessary media needs to be available for order online.

Sing-a-long meme time. Updated!

2009-05-01T13:46:00.005+02:00

Despite the decided lack of interest in my little game, I'll go ahead and update the songs anyway, cuz I said I would. Although I can't imagine WHAT would be keeping all of you from staring at my blog page for hours on end to try and guess songs you have little to sub-zero interest in! I got a sympathy vote from my mom, so she wins the prize. Hah! Didn't know there was a prize, did you? Now I bet you wished you'd played! Especially when the prize (pursuant to previous penchants) is special German dust bunnies from under my desk!

Yesterday I accompanied the 6th grade field trip to Bamberg. Because I'm brain damaged and forgot all about this post. Evidently, every spring I am overcome by a sense of civic duty and volunteer to be seen in public with a large mass of chaotic organisms some people insist on calling children. Also, I really wanted to see Bamberg without having to drive myself. I guess I took some nice pictures, though I can't imagine when, seeing as how all I really recall is herding drunk monkeys.

Anyway, I spent all last night and this morning recuperating by blasting my iTunes playlist as loud as I dare. In doing so I was reminded of a meme I saw a while back that seems like the perfect placeholder post while the swelling in my brain goes down.

Put your playlist on random and copy the first line of each of the first 20 songs you hear as clues.

Readers list the songs/artists in comments.

It's supposed to be a game you play with like-minded bloggers, but my song list is so schizophrenic that I'd be really afraid if there was somebody out there with a mind that recognized all these songs. Additionally, you're supposed to go back and fill in the lines that people guess correctly, which I'll do in a few days even if nobody plays along. Mostly this is just a way of admitting my deep seated pop affection.

You know I never meant to see you again/That I only passed by as a friend. -Wish It Would Rain Down, Phil Collins
I wanted somthin'/ that's purer than the water/ like we were -It's Beginning to Get To Me, Snow Patrol
Won't you come see about me/I'll be alone dancing, you know it baby. -Don't You Forget About Me, Simple Minds
While we're on the subject, could we change the subject now?/I was knocking on your ear's door, but you were always out. -Missed the Boat, Modest Mouse
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to/why don't you go where fashion sits? -Puttin' On the Ritz, Taco
Will I wake up/Is it a dream I made up/No, I guess it's reality -Plowed, Sponge
They say I may be crazy/I only say I've had my fill -Probably Will, Concrete Blond
There's too many things I haven't done yet/Too many sunsets I haven't seen -Many The Miles, Sara Bareilles
Dance with me across the ocean floor/Sail away to heaven's open door -Mating Game, Bitter:Sweet
She'll let you in her house/If you come knockin' late at night -Secret Garden, Bruce Springsteen
You're trying to make your mark in society/You're usin' all the tricks that you used on me -Not Your Steppin' Stone, The Monkees
You with the sad eyes, don't be discouraged/ oh I realize it's hard to take courage -True Colors, Cyndi Lauper
Never part of your elite, I'm just alright/Class structure waving colors, bleeding from my throat -Stuck With Me, Green Day
There's a brand new dance but I don't know its name/the people from bad homes do it again and again -Fashion, David Bowie
Running off over next door's garden before the hour is done/It's more a question of feeling than it is a question of fun -Balaclava, Arctic Monkeys
You won't admit you love me, and so/how am I ever to know? you only tell me... -Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, CAKE
C'mere my love, I'll tell you a secret/Come closer now, I want you to believe it -Edge of the World, Faith No More
If there's anything that you want/If there's anything I can do/Just call on me... -From Me To You, The Beatles
Thinking back, thinking of you/Summertime, I think it was June -Dakota, Stereophonics
Desert sky, dream beneath a desert sky/ the rivers run but soon run dry -In God's Country, U2

Arthur! Honk if you love justice!

2009-04-28T14:33:00.007+02:00

Gather 'round, kids! It's Scarlet-V's story time! Today I'm going to tell you something very humiliating and possibly illegal, though I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out, so keep this under your hats, okay? Can I trust you to keep a secret, oh freely accessible and world wide web? Can I, huh? That's what I thought, thanks.

Okay, so the beginning of this story technically goes back to when I was 16 and learning to drive. My dad taught me in a little 1981 silver Honda Accord that I bought with my own money and the fact that car, father and daughter survived this experience is testament to a higher power. While not the best of instructors, my dad is an AWESOME driver, and really I learned by spending hours upon hours on long car trips watching and listening to him. I learned how to properly decelerate into a curve and accelerate out of it, how to keep my arms stiff as iron poles on the wheel if I ever went off the side of a cliff, what an engine sounds like when it's time to shift. Although I think that last lesson was more a teaching tool of the 1978 Datsun pick-up truck in which we spent all those hours upon hours.

But actual behind the wheel instruction time was more traumatic, and we powered through it as quickly as possible. The Honda was an automatic, and though my dad drove a stick, he wasn't volunteering to teach me anything more about driving where he had to sit in the passenger seat... ever. Ever, ever. So while I drove the wheels off that little Honda (safely, of course, and thankfully never off the side of a cliff), it was the ONLY thing I knew how to drive. One time a friend's mom asked me to move their minivan out of the drive way and I just stared at her like she'd asked me to till a field in a John Deer tractor.

Moon Child always thought it was seven kinds of hilarious that I could throw a blanket and suitcase in my car and DRIVE IT ACROSS THE COUNTRY AT 18 YEARS OLD (true story), but the thought of piloting a stick shift made my blood run cold. So when I returned from across the country (by plane, the Honda having finally wheezed its last in New Jersey), she took it upon herself to instruct me in the ways of the manual transmission.

Anyone who drives a stick will know about the "sweet spot", that sometimes infinitesimal and always unique position of the clutch where the gear engages and the car hums merrily along with building intensity until it's time to do it again. WIN! That thing where the car lurches around like a carnival ride and dies in the middle of the intersection? That would be: FAIL. I felt I had a pretty good handle on when to shift, but it was that elusive sweet spot that terrified me.

To combat this fear, Moon Child drove me out to the boondocks several miles from her home in her own little stick shift vehicle and got me behind the wheel. Then she proceeded to tell me I wasn't driving a car.

Huh?

No. I was sitting on the floor, legs extended, playing an erotic game of footsie with my fantasy lover. Legs intertwined, it was perfectly acceptable for me to slide my left foot firmly and steadily along the outside of his right thigh, then draw it back slowly, sensually, as I extended my right foot down the inside of his right thigh.

You see where this is going, don't you? Needless to say, but she did anyway, I was to be very careful with my right foot or fantasy lover was going to be useless for any fantasies I had lined up for later. After going through this scenario two or three times, I felt I had a better handle on the concept of the sweet spot. We celebrated my success out on this country road by getting stoned and staring at the mountains. I handed back the keys, which Moon Child refused, saying she didn't want to waste a perfectly good buzz and I should just drive back myself. Feeling much too good to argue, I said Sure! and off we went. I never stalled once. Of course, I'm pretty sure I never made it past third gear, either, but the important thing to remember is that I overcame my stick shift fear! Oh yeah, and you know, blah blah, drugs are bad.

In a seemingly unrelated story, many years later in 2002 when I was shopping for a new(ish) car, I kept my eyes peeled for likely candidates as I traversed the city. I knew I couldn't afford anything remotely expensive, so I only looked at compact cars. Many looked to me like roller skates on wheels, poorly made, etc., and the only ones that appealed to me turned out to be 3-series BMWs. So I'd cringe and keep looking because even the cheap BMWs were way out of my league.

And many years after that, yesterday in fact, I bought a used BMW 316 5-speed to drive in Germany.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. Something about being prepared, or having a best friend who will simultaneously enrich and incriminate you. Feel free to supply your own. I'm going to bask in the irony and explore fifth gear.

Let's see how you fare against two bits of flat, shiny America!

2009-04-28T08:49:00.003+02:00

Action packed week in process! Lurid details to follow. In the meantime...

...more pics from castle wrangling adventure last weekend.

Ve haf vays of making you like it!

2009-04-26T14:13:00.008+02:00

When we drive Randy's Dodge Ram 2500 around Germany, people stare. Little children look up from the back seat of their parents' Volkswagon with fear and wonder on their faces, not unlike they would look if a FLYING SAUCER LANDED IN THEIR YARD. We've had our picture taken by excited teenagers at a stop light, and on the rare occasion (rare = twice) that we've seen a German in a full size pick up, they wave at us with a familiarity that is kind of creepy. I'm sorry, when did we join your secret pick-up truck club? Will there be dues? Ritual sacrifices?

I feel like I should practice my parade float wave. It's disconcerting and makes me long for a small dark space and a bottle of candy-coated Xanax.

But right now it's our only option for transportation. And when a Saturday dawns bright and clear and breezy and 71 degrees, one should be shot for not taking advantage of it, regardless of how jumpy and neurotic one gets riding around in the truck. Because nobody is going to take pity on one so one just needs to get over herself already. One will begin working on that as soon as Nobody stops leaving his muddy shoes in the living room.

Ahem.

First stop, Gemünden am Main. We didn't see a practical way to make it up to the ruins, but found a spot across the river from which to take a few pics.

Next we swung around to some beautiful castle ruins at Homburg, which is NOT the same as Homburg, Germany. I'm not sure how this works, only that trying to google-map it gives me a headache. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with alternate realities and inter-dimensional travel.

The first thing you notice about these ruins is the view. I mean, Oh. My. God.

I kinda felt like Macbeth standing up there, surveying the village and forest. Except for the tiny discrepancies regarding country and lack of invading army and not being a murderer.

There wasn't a lot of information about the castle itself. In fact, the only thing I could determine for sure was that it came into being in the year 1008. Whether that indicates start of construction or first arrow launched from the ramparts or what, I don't know. My brain shorted out when Randy said, "So, it's a thousand and one years old. Neat," and I got some kind of weird time-vertigo and had to sit down.

I should probably point out here that the double-rail fence is not part of the original construction. That was put there because the other side drops off into what used to be the moat. THE MOAT, people! How freakin' cool is that??

Sadly, access to this tower is via the Rapunzel method only, the ground floor having long since been covered in layers of soil courtesy of erosion. Something to keep in mind when Rowen turns 15.

Little architectural elements like this kept grabbing my attention. What was it? A statue platform? A tiny turret? (Heh, "tiny turret". That's funny.) The chapel remains had a statue worn down to a vaguely human-shaped lump of stone with no face. (That was creepy.) Rowen pointed out that the use of arches in doorways and windows was evidence of Roman influence. This helpful observation was made at every arch. Of which there were eleventy-billion. She doesn't know it, but she just severely endangered her chances of seeing Rome.

I was always under the impression that summers in mediaeval times would suck. All that clothing, no AC, giant stone buildings with little circulation. This notion was dispelled upon entering the rooms still accessible. Four feet of solid stone bricks doesn't trap the heat so much as UNRELENTING DANK DARKNESS. I'm still shivering.

This charming view is directly over the west side drop-off of the hill where the ruins sit. The moat and most of the wall protect the east and north sides. From marauding bands of Slavs, no doubt. These days, the only thing threatening to come up the north and east sides is vineyards. I'd love to go back when the grapes come in and take pictures and daydream about all the wine they'd produce. Actually, forget the pictures, I'll be too busy drooling.

For her part, I think Rowen nearly forgot she even had any angst upon first arriving in Germany.

Ich bin Amerikanerin, and retarded.

2009-04-24T13:29:00.004+02:00

Confession time.

I gave up on my German language class. Not the language, just the class, which was taught by a woman who had some kind of permanent, deer-in-the-headlights expression and was populated by spouses intent on derailing the class into provincial bitch sessions.

Not my cuppa.

So I corralled my resources at home, which I found included an "important phrases and words" cd that could be downloaded to my iPod.

Eureka! (Not the town, the expression. Been to the town and trust me, it's nothing to exclaim over.)

So I made the necessary electronic transfer (I just love technology, don't you? Also, parenthetical asides; I love those, too) and set out on a lovely walk down obscure paths where I would not be looked at strangely while I recited things like Wo ist der Ticketschalter? and Wir möchten gern in ein preiswertes Restaurant gehen. Especially since there is neither a ticketing counter nor a cheap restaurant anywhere on my walk.

I took a road less travelled by, if the grass growing in the ruts was any indication, and to my surprise and delight found it passed right by some stables I have seen from the main road. I didn't linger, however, as there was a large truck there making deliveries and my German resources don't include the phrase: I like your pretty horsies! So, discretion being the better part of valor, I set off back the way I came.

I was listening very intently to my helpful German translator on my iPod; she was giving me several ways to say "It is 9:45." By remarkable coincidence, it actually was 9:45 according to my watch and I was very excited. Es ist Viertel vor zehn! Thrilling, I tell you! Just thrilling! I could barely contain myself as I passed an elderly German man on the walking path. "Es ist neun Uhr funfundvierzig!" I wanted to shout, pointing to my watch! But I restrained myself and just walked ahead, concentrating on my earphones but still responding politely to his "Hallo."

It struck me as odd, because Germans don't typically acknowledge people they pass on the street. They don't buy into the whole, smile and wave at strangers thing and I'm seriously considering applying for citizenship based on that cultural quirk alone. I was half dwelling on that, half on the word for "immediately" (sofort) and half on the dog standing in my path barking vehemently at me.

Yes, three halves because my powers of concentration are just that awesome.

As I'm being annoyed with the dog who doesn't seem to want to let me pass (and isn't that just odd, too, because German dogs are usually so well behaved) and trying to hear what my translator is saying and becoming increasingly aware that the old man has stopped and is staring at me, I realize...

My lovely path? Just dead ended into a farm house. Perhaps the old man's farmhouse, but definitely the dog's farmhouse.

Oops. What's the German for "I missed my turn-off?"

You know what doesn't translate so well? Apologetic and nervous laughter.

"Entschuldigen Sie, bitte. I'm learning to, uh, spreche Sie deutsch. See? Um, you know, eins, zwei, drei; a, b, c and I wasn't watching where... yeah. Ah, ich... um, ich..."

*sigh*

"Ich bin dummkopf, ja?"

Elderly German man didn't argue, just continued to watch me with that "Do they breathe air on your planet?" look as I found my escape path and power-walked away as fast as possible.

For my next foray into cultural relations, I'm going to walk into a men's public restroom and order a plate of chicken turds, at the same time.

Oh, I'm- I'm dazed and confused. I've been chasing this wee naked child over hill and over dale.

2009-04-20T10:07:00.005+02:00

Since we arrived in Germany, Randy has been very eager to recreate his previous experience over here by hopping in a car and searching out the ruins of mediaeval castles, which are plentiful enough to make such a proposition plausible, but far enough between to make the "searching" part a notable consideration. His previous experience, however, didn't include a full size 3/4 ton pick up, a wife who is prone toward low blood sugar and a pre-teen daughter. The first time we attempted this "hopping and searching" recreation, it went over like the Hindenburg.

Yesterday, however, we benefitted from a little previous scouting on his part and our spontaneous castle wrangling yielded a few pics and one very excited pre-teen. All this despite the fact that it was noon which is usually the worst time of day to snap pics, not to mention dragging Rowen over hill and dale during her lunch hour. (A bribe of peanut M&Ms helped, I'm sure.)

The name of the town is Bad Kissigen, "Bad" indicating a hot springs in the area, not the relative morality of its citizens. I'm not sure what the scoop is on the ruins, since I couldn't read the German signs, but judging from the accompanying illustrations, I'd venture to say the castle dates from around the 12th century. Built by Otto I von Bodenlauben, which you can wiki if you're so inclined. All I know is that the dude built a seriously sturdy castle.

Super-heated infusion of free radicals and tanin; just the thing for heating the synapses!

2009-04-19T10:09:00.004+02:00

If you're chained to your computer like I am (-actually, no, I'm not chained because I have a laptop. It's more like being tethered. Not unlike when Rowen was an infant and attached to my breast. Except that no liquids are allowed within a 6 foot radius of my precious laptop. Aaaand now I've grossed myself out. Moving on...)

Let me start over. What I meant to say is that I now have my finger in so many internet pies (uh oh, getting close to the dirty place again. Abort! Abort!) that for the past week I completely forgot about this blog! And I know that just breaks 7 whole hearts (and 4 half ones) so I am here to atone for my sins with an offering of last week's activities.

::crickets::

Ha ha! Just kidding. Here, now I'm being serious:

::snoooorrre::

Actually, there was three days of seminars and meetings with the Employment Readiness program director in there. Two were devoted to resume building, which was a really interesting process wherein one supplies the "bricks and mortar" and the instructor tells you how to "build a resume".

I have one brick. And precious little mortar. And a sincere desire to NEVER AGAIN COUNT A SINGLE PILL. Consequently, I don't have a "building" so much as a "lean-to". So that was fun! In the way that reading Kierkegaard is fun! Which is to say, not at all!

I always knew that Walgreens was taking advantage of me and undervaluing my skills, but it didn't really show until I tried to find another job. At 33. With no transferrable skills. So, y'know, yay me! I'm sure this is painting a glorious, particolored picture of why I haven't been blogging this past week.

In happier news, I'm getting closer to buying a car. Complete with very nearly getting ripped off by a dealer, but thankfully dodged that bullet. There is a very charming older German man who speaks impeccable, if profanity-laced, sales-English. He's a riot! He's also a scam artist. But now I have that out of the way, so I'm sure it'll be smooth sailing from here on out! Coincidentally, those exact words were uttered by Odysseus upon leaving Troy.

Today's plans include sunshine, digital camera, some kind of food that I don't have to cook and probably large quantities of chocolate and/or alcohol in which to drown my ennui. Tschüss!

How do YOU spell relief?

2009-04-14T20:12:00.002+02:00

I spell it like this:

Amazon blames book-search glitch on cataloguing error.

I'm a little bit embarrassed for flying off the handle, but BOY, that was a close one!

Yeast Devil! Back to the oven that baked you!

2009-04-14T16:52:00.008+02:00

In the states, we would've spent Easter at my in-laws in the midst of a huge shindig. Complete with a scavenger hunt for Easter basket goodies and a water-gun fight (a tradition which Randy actually began by accident a few years ago and which they gamely carry on in his absence). There's usually about 15 people and enough ham to feed them all twice. Or in my case, three times and can I just say how happy I am that my grandmother was an atheist? Otherwise I'd be Jewish and unable to enjoy all that salty pink goodness.

I'm not one for doing the ham myself, however, so we had chicken bouillabaisse and zucchini salad for our Easter dinner. Oh, and this:

Two loaves of fluffy, eggy goodness. I let the initial rise go a little too long and there was almost a "situation", but I beat it back with the broom handle and every thing was fine.

And then there were these for dessert:

Aren't they cute? They're supposed to have green frosting, but there was a mix up at the grocery store wherein my motivation forgot to come with me and buy green frosting. So now it's more like bunnies in the snow, instead of bunnies in the grass, but we're all okay with that. Rowen decorated each cupcake with minimum filching of the goodies, a supreme effort on her part, I assure you.

Well, not too much of an effort, seeing as how there's 20 cupcakes and 3 people to consume them. Doesn't take an advanced math degree to see that she's going to get most of those goodies anyway.

Thomas Bowlder can kiss my ass.

2009-04-13T07:08:00.006+02:00

Censorship is defined as examining media for the purpose of finding and removing material objectionable on moral, political, religious, or other grounds.

Personally, I love it. Oh yeah, censor it right out, baby! Slash and hack. Because that makes it WAY EASIER for me to be a total rebel when I seek it out ANYWAY and read it under the covers with my flashlight and act all titillated. And if I can be lazy and anti-establishment, it's a very good day for me.

Of course, all that assumes that I'll even know what material is being censored. And here's where I give the internet a big ol' hug, and remind the pessimists and conspiracy theorists out there that the human race was engineered for checks and balances.

Because even as the largest internet retailer, Amazon.com, is doing it's own bit of slash and hack, another large portion of the internet is hissing and booing and throwing tomatoes. You can read the story of how Amazon is taking it upon themselves to de-list titles with "adult" themes (and arbitrarily, at that) and the nearly instantaneous internet response here, at the Los Angeles Times online. (Link lifted from whatever.scalzi.com)

You might infer from this post that I'm anti-censorship, but surprisingly, I'm not. What I AM against is the wholesale blacking-out of information. Although not explicitly covered by the technical definition, in practice mild censorship acts as a sort of labeling system. "Hey, these lyrics are explicit." Okay, probably won't play that to rock my little one to sleep at night, so thanks! Or, "this movie contains nudity and sex scenes." Yeah, I know. Sorry about the late fees.

I'm all for a process which disseminates knowledge, which classification does. It allows me to make informed decisions about the media and/or information I take in or expose my child to. Because I have this funny idea that the best person to make those kinds of decisions for myself is, get this: MYSELF. Not my elected officials, assorted religious leaders, or panty waist tight-asses with no senses of humor... but I repeat myself. (With apologies to Mark Twain.)

Is there information out there that I wish would be burned in a giant bonfire of liberal cleansing? Sure. Neo-nazi propaganda comes to mind. But propaganda alone is just information, and while I'm not arguing that ideas can't be dangerous I am saying that arguing for the complete censorship of such material requires quantifying the instances of criminal behavior that can be directly attributed to the media. And honestly, most censorship isn't about anything as empirical as quantification, it's about fear. There is some media out there that violates human rights by it's very existence, such as child pornography, and you better believe I advocate the wholesale censorship of that type of media completely. (In the interest of specificity, I mean depicting children in explicit sexual acts for the sole purpose of exploitation; not heart wrenching and complicated memoirs like Maya Angelou's or Augusten Burroughs's.)

Amazon's arbitrary and sudden de-facto removal of media which Amazon deems adult-themed is a type of black-marker censorship; the kind that takes away my choice to examine things for myself and I really hate that. Especially when it disproportionately targets GBLT -themed material. Because "Rubyfruit Jungle" is adult themed but "American Psycho" is not? C'mon, Amazon. I really hope they get their act together, or are at least intimidated by the angry internet outcry into re-listing the media because I use Amazon A LOT and boycotting them would be the opposite of lazy. But if Amazon won't let me exercise my right to chose my information from them, then I exercise my right to chose my information from someone else. I hope you will, too.

First you take a hypercube, then a heat press...

2009-04-12T14:05:00.006+02:00

Finally unpacked the last box yesterday. Way behind schedule, but forces completely beyond my control were at work. Laziness is beyond my control, right?

Got the shelves put up behind the couch, and they're working very well. I'd show you a picture but I'm still not happy with how I have them configured. Will probably change it up 5 or 6 ~~thousand~~ million times before that elusive qualifier, aesthetically pleasing, can be used with any real confidence. The challenge is making them functional without sending my OCD into overdrive, and because I have no design knowledge, it's all trial and error. I hope manic rearranging isn't grounds for divorce.

I've conducted my own inspection of fire services on post by setting off our smoke alarm not once, but twice. The first time by toasting bread in the oven and failing to remember that A.) toasting does not equal baking and B.) ovens are hot. Individual smoke alarms are hard wired into the building and each other and sent via computer signal to the fire department. They can only be shut off via the terminal at the fire station, which happens when the fire chief stops by to make sure you're not burning government property. By the way, I have very understanding neighbors.

The second time I was cooking with my usual enthusiasm for oil and high heat and discovered that my above-the-stove fan doesn't work. Two seconds later, the alarm went off. The fire chief and I are now on a first name basis. However, my neighbors aren't speaking to me at all.

I'm taking a German language class offered by Army Community Services (henceforth to be referred to as ACS because I have to learn to speak in acronyms) for 90 minutes three days a week, but the instructor isn't actually a teacher, just a German national who pulled the short straw. So far I've learned that every German pretty much speaks their own language.

Next week I have a meeting with the Employment Readiness program director to see if he can make 12 years working for Walgreens sound a helluva lot more impressive than it actually was. Hopefully, I'll be gainfully employed by next month and will not be so transparently LYING when I complain about having no time.

And finally, because I've found that this blog layout works better with pictures, here's a shot of Randy standing thoughtfully at the edge of the creek that runs by the walking path just outside Askren Manor.

Doesn't he look contemplative and quiescent? Want to know the motivation behind such a serene pose? He's wondering how that shopping cart got shoved deep under that bridge.

Spring comes to Schweinfurt.

2009-04-10T15:24:00.003+02:00

Finally!

"That's funny," said Pooh. "I dropped it on the other side... and it came out on this side!"

2009-04-10T14:48:00.004+02:00

Now one day Pooh and Piglet and Rabbit and Roo were all playing Poohsticks together. They had dropped their sticks in when Rabbit said "Go!" and then they had hurried across to the other side of the bridge, and now they were all leaning over the edge, waiting to see whose stick would come out first. But it was a long time coming, because the river was very lazy that day, and hardly seemed to mind if it didn't ever get there at all.

From "The House at Pooh Corner"

by A. A. Milne

Aaaargh! The flesh is WEAK!

2009-04-09T09:04:00.003+02:00

I have succumbed. One goddamn person sent me a twitter-follow request and I SUCCUMBED. Because there aren't enough terabytes on the internet to house both my will power AND ego, so one had to go.

The devil on my shoulder now looks like that stupid bird. ----------------follow me----------------->

Oh crap. Here she goes again.

2009-04-07T23:30:00.006+02:00

Just wanted to give a brief congratulatory shout out to both Iowa and Vermont, for making the world a little bit more moral recently.

I could have said "progressive" or "fearless" or "equality-minded" but I've been reading this book recently:

(amazon link)

and I never in a million years thought I'd agree with a preacher, but this dude just makes sense. So I won't hold the preacher thing against him.

I'm not normally a fan of cheering on the opinions which only justify one's own views. I don't particularly like the whole, "call to the faithful" stance, regardless of whether or not I share that opinion. But the man's reasoning is sound.

I feel like I'm having a conversation with someone who understands me.

So I say again: thank you Iowa and Vermont for standing up for morality. May you shame the rest of us into doing the right thing.

Eh.

2009-04-01T17:22:00.003+02:00

So, I'm taking a small break from the internet. For several reasons. First off, though the boxes are put away the chaos remains. Small piles of chaos planted in various states of ready-to-wreck-my-life-by-losing-important-paperwork chaos. These must be dealt with or I will have to suffer the consequences, such as hair loss from frantic pulling and more frequent trips to the dentist to repair damage from teeth gnashing.

Secondly, I'm way overdue with posting chapters of fanfic over at that "other" site that I won't tell you about. But trust me, I have LEGIONS of fans breathlessly awaiting my next installment. Where "legions" means 2 or 3 and "breathlessly" means mild chastisement. Still, it's a self-imposed schedule and I mean to stick to it.

Thirdly, my G'ma died yesterday and I don't much feel like working up my usual wad of flippant humor. She was a feisty old broad, but worn out from 8 years of dealing with various lung diseases that denied her sufficient oxygen. Besides which, there's a whole mess of conflicted emotions there that I'm conveniently denying right now, and working them out on my blog would be disrespectful to the family who are dealing with this like normal people.

So, yeah. Break time.

Not to fear, however; I'm sure I'll be back with stories of our Deutchland adventures, photographs, and/or flat out lies before too long. I'll spare you the sound file with the annoying off-air station buzz... because I'm a techno-tard, not because I'm nice. But this is a handy reminder that the network is currently experiencing broadcast difficulties. It's only a test.

You'd be better off just buying a copy of the Enquirer and turning it into a flip book.

2009-03-30T13:56:00.006+02:00

Boxes are gone. Mostly. Stuff is put away. More or less. Will venture out from under the table as soon as shakes taper off.

In an engineering feat straight out of science fiction, Randy managed to fit all of our belongings from a standard, one car garage into a 5'x5' storage closet. Not only do they fit, but every item is visible and accessible. And yet the man still cannot figure out how to load a dishwasher effectively. The mind boggles.

We've made a family pact that nothing new will come into the house unless something old goes out. Which translates roughly as "Scarlet-v is hovering on the brink of nervous collapse so don't do anything to mess with her house of cards." The exception to this is consumables and (as always) books and/or DVDs. Because they don't have a 12-step program for Amazon.com addictions. It was with that in mind that we attended the Spring Bazaar on Saturday.

Part of Rowen's honor roll requirement is 2 hours of community service per quarter, and the garrison-sponsored Bazaar was an easy sign up. Things just worked out so that I went along, planning to scan the booths disinterestedly while she fulfilled her requirement and Randy took care of some work stuff on that part of the post. I had this picture in my head of some stupid arts and crafts, county fair type offerings and that just isn't my schtick.

Instead, what I found was vendors selling everything from Wedgwood China to Persian rugs, and every country in between. Even Randy put off his errand running to haunt the cheese booth. All I can say is, it's a good thing I didn't show up with money or we would have been broke before I got 30 feet from the door. Only the fact that we're going to be buying a car soon kept me from wrapping myself up in one of those Persian rugs, Cleopatra-style. As it was, Randy and I made a circuit of all the vendors first, then made a bee-line for an ATM machine.

We left with two bags of candy, three artisan cheeses, one gourmet salami, six bottles of German wine, three bags of herbal tea and two Christmas presents. And it's really going to suck waiting nine whole months to give the AWESOME presents we bought. Seriously. I'm already doing an antsy dance. Fortunately, I have six bottles of wine to take care of that. Which should last me about a week.

Just kidding! Two weeks.

Hopefully in two weeks the sun will decide to do more than poke its head shyly around rain clouds once or twice a day, and I'll be distracted by long walks with my camera. One thing I am loving about Germany is the accommodations for walkers and bicycle riders. Yesterday, I found a path that had I followed it to the end, would have taken me to the next town! Not that I'm THAT ambitious of a walker, but it's nice to know such ways exist. Especially after living in a town that didn't even have sidewalks for the last 3.5 years.

In other news, everybody to whom I've mentioned the hypothetical London trip has responded with enthusiastic encouragement, making it rapidly less hypothetical. I'm now entering the vaguely interested phase of research, involving virtual feelers on the internet and a few books on the subject added to my Amazon wish list (see?? addicted!). This still-imaginary trip is taking shape in my head as an 8-10 day vacation, mostly London with day trips to surrounding places of interest like Bath and Cambridge, etc. If anybody has suggestions on where to come by the most reliable information for cheap lodging, eats, and free wi-fi, I'd love to entertain them in the comments. Thanks!

We can belch our way to the astral plane!

2009-03-28T17:14:00.003+01:00

Before the movers came and destroyed my hope of sanity, I gathered up the few personal belongings we had to move them out of the way. Here's what I discovered:

No excuse for not speaking German yet, that's what I discovered.

Between generous donations from relatives, army-sponsored educational materials and my own knee-jerk reaction to strange situations (buy books!), we now have a collection the Library of Congress would have trouble cataloguing. Yay, us.

In more frivolous news, the garrison sponsored a Spring Bazaar today, details of which will be forthcoming, but in the interim here's a picture of part of the reason we're going to be living on peanut butter sandwiches until next pay day.

Yum.

Where am I gonna go?! Ipswich??

2009-03-27T08:11:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I cleared enough boxes to open a walkway into every room of the apartment. Which is rather like digging a series of interconnected trenches from Rheims to Verdun only without the rats. I think. There were suspicious movements among the boxes that I can't totally account for, but I think that's probably due to gravity taking exception to my precarious balancing acts.

The kitchen is set up to my satisfaction, however, which will come in really handy when I want to start ranting about how nobody puts things away properly. I'm not going to churn out culinary masterpieces until we find the kitchen table. I remember putting it together, but there was an avalanche of packing paper and I think it's snowed in indefinitely.

Surprisingly, I think we're going to have room for nearly everything we came with. The only exception being the multitude of plastic storage devices Randy and I accumulated separately (a few together) over the years when we didn't care or couldn't afford real furniture. This place, though, has a great deal of built-in storage so I don't think we need to hang on to our Barbie Dream House decor any longer. Also, I've already talked Randy into visiting our local IKEA for new Expidit shelves with the promise that we'll display his baseball memorabilia prominently on them.

I finally obtained my driver's license last week. American military/dependents/civilian workforce receive their license through a special agreement with the host nation, which, for the purposes of this blog, means I had to get all sweaty-palmed like a teenager and take the "special agreement" test that says I'm allowed to take my life in my hands by getting on the Autobahn.

We're reconsidering the car issue yet again because Randy will be TDY this summer in Bulgaria, of all places. This is better than deploying to Iraq by sheer virtue of the fact that people will most likely not be shooting at him, but I have it on good authority that the scenery's not any better. It's a special duty assignment that we don't have all the details on yet, but he'll be gone six months. What this means for me is that I lose my chauffeur back and forth to IKEA, and since I have absolutely no intention of driving Randy's truck over a single centimeter of German soil, we're thinking a little grocery-getter might be appropriate.

Rowen wants me to take our status as independent gals this summer as an opportunity to take her to London. For some reason she's dead set on living like a local there, up to and including ordering "chips" that she can eat with a fork. I have no doubt that this is directly influenced by the amount of Doctor Who we've been watching. Not that I think this is a bad thing, but putting it terms she could understand, I told her it would take FORTY YEARS of her allowance to spend a month in London in the summer, and that's if we stayed in a cardboard box. She seems to be okay with that.

Random updates.

2009-03-25T08:46:00.004+01:00

The boxes have officially annexed our apartment.
It's snowing. Right now. F*&% you, Mother Nature.
This May, I will have a 12 year old daughter. That's in 2 months. I think a little preemptive drinking is in order.
Randy has used the F word more in the two months since returning to the "real army" than the entire 3.5 years he endured recruiting.
He still hasn't slipped up in front of our daughter, however, which has me beat over any given day in the past 11 years.
Found out the hard way that dual-voltage wiring in the house does not also mean hertz conversion. Ergo, digital clocks do not work. (Still cursing Nikola Tesla.)
We're out of wine. Except for my incessant complaining about the boxes, which isn't nearly as ~~intoxicating~~ satisfying.

Fuck. Me. Sideways.

2009-03-23T11:07:00.004+01:00

The movers just left.

Holy. Crap.

I mean, it must be holy, right? To justify the accumulation, care and keeping of ALL THIS STUFF? I'd love to show you a picture, but there's currently a cardboard box model of Krakatoa in front of where my camera is. Here's a pretty good approximation, though:

(photo credit)

Randy isn't due back from field training exercises until late tomorrow, so guess who gets to put the furniture back together?

Rowen.

Just kidding. I'm pretty sure some magical elves will sneak in sometime around the middle of the night and do it for us. Also, they should leave shoes.

This blog is now on hiatus until I find my way out of the boxes. Randy has the GPS with him, so that could be a while.

Tschüss!

Just to set the record straight, I'm not inclined towards, nor interested in, scratching the neighbors.

2009-03-20T06:44:00.004+01:00

Remember all those beautiful windows I was so excited about? Well, I won't have any curtains for the dining room until Monday and that hasn't been a problem so far because it looks out on the "back" where only a fenced-off (and currently inaccessible) playground sits. The next building over can't really see in, either, unless it's dark and I have all the lights on ~~and Randy is mauling me on the dining room table.~~

But that all changed this morning at 6 freakin' 30 am, when some construction workers started prepping the playground area for whatever it is that they're going to do to it. Since I was up appeasing the angry beast of my tween with offerings of pancakes (in the dining room) I had to put on a bra. And move my cardboard cutout of a naked Gerard Butler with a strategically placed marijuana leaf back into the bedroom.

Not cool, dudes. Not cool.

This is why I need twitter.

2009-03-19T21:13:00.004+01:00

Out of the blue:

Rowen: Mom, let's give ourselves a hand; we didn't need a book on the black death!

Me: What??

****

This was actually a reference to an Eddie Izzard routine, but that didn't come out 'til much later.

Jello fish in de Nile.

2009-03-16T17:04:00.007+01:00

I was mentioning to my mother recently that people are like jello. Before the age of 30, they have all the necessary components to make them who they will be, but it's much more fluid. Also, it stains. And for god's sake, don't spill it, because it's all sticky and takes forever to clean up.

At around 30 (give or take), you gel; go from liquid to solid(-ish). Depending on what mold you've poured yourself into, you can either be an adorable Playskool-like castle, a fish, or several cubes from an ice tray. But everybody gels, for better or worse.

I'm not sure what it is about gelling that makes you look at the world differently. Maybe it's because you're not so ready to drip into every crack and crevice you come across. Maybe it's the rather humbling realization that you jiggle. But you definitely start to realize where your boundaries are. And the boundaries of people you thought you knew, back when you were both all sloshy.

I've developed an immense respect for those boundaries, both mine and others. Whoever you are, whatever shape you're in, I figure that by the time you've spent at least 30 years on this earth you've worked really hard to define that shape and you're entitled to it. I wouldn't have understood that ten or even five years ago, and anybody that tried to explain it to me was wasting their breath. Mostly, I don't intend to waste mine, and just generally refrain from offering advice to the sweet little puddles of un-gelled jello I come into contact with. I imagine that at 40, I'll sit around going, "Whoo doggy! The advice I wouldn't listen to in my 30's!" (This is NOT, incidentally, an invitation for anyone to try and unload that advice anyway.)

But just because I respect a shape doesn't mean I have to like it. Just because I recognized all that potential in the swirling mass of sugar water, doesn't mean I'm fool enough to think that you can melt back down and re-gel. (I'm being metaphorical, but that really doesn't work with jello. I tried it and spent two days cleaning out the saucepan.) Lots of people successfully trim away at their shape to become something slightly different. Sometimes it's superficial cosmetic work, but sometimes it really does help them fit the space around them better. And I'm all for that, but it's painful and exacting work and not for the faint of gelatin.

We are who we are. If you popped out of your mold all surprised, going, "Holy shit! I'm a fish!" and what you really wanted to be was a castle, well... somewhere along the line you fucked up. More than likely, you're never going to be a castle. You might be able to pull off amphibian, or lady's fan, but don't just sit there insisting you're a damn castle when clearly, you're a fish. Because if you don't look at yourself and see what you really are, you are never going to be anything different. And I do not have the time or patience to sit around with you, trying to convince ourselves that you're something you're not.

One of my most basic parenting tenets (other than, "there's no way to avoid having my 13 year old daughter hate me, just lay in a store of strong spirits and wait for 14") is to teach my kid to see how the world works in reality. Not in theory, or ideally, but really. Because how else can she expect to change it if she doesn't acknowledge where the problems lie?

That little bit of wisdom was (thankfully) floating around in my liquid state like a pear chunk, and I was able to begin applying it long before I gelled. But now I'm starting to see how that outward vision applies to the inner self. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we are who we are. Just expecting everyone to love jello fish isn't enough, because not everybody does. That's okay, but if you don't love jello fish and you are a jello fish, then just saying "No, I'm not," isn't enough.

I guess the point I'm really after here has less to do with what other people think of their own molds, than what I think of them. And that's okay, too, because this is my blog. I've just been frustrated lately by fish trying to tell me they're castles, then getting all offended when I tell them they're not. And I know it's not my place to try and convince them otherwise, because as I mentioned: respect the shape. But my shape? My boundaries? They don't fit so well into denial, or wishful thinking. That's just how I gelled.

Dang! My secret identity is out!

2009-03-15T16:41:00.005+01:00

(source of my power)

I could have chosen the power to wear a Wonder Woman-like bustier, but boobs like mine have a power all their own, which I should only use for good, not evil. Thus I will rein them in. But don't make me bust open that utility belt! You wouldn't like me when I'm busty. (Okay, somebody stop me, right the hell now, before I blaspheme against the entire pantheon of superheroes.)

This is why I love her.

2009-03-14T22:25:00.002+01:00

Well, it's one of many reasons, but it's also foremost among them.

Moon Child: I have found heaven - It's in Portland.

Picture Fail.

2009-03-14T16:48:00.003+01:00

Text only. I'm in a very texty frame of mind, having hauled my lazy butt out the door before noon on a Saturday for the express purpose of visiting the post library (and other places unrelated to this blogging, but may be referenced at a later date).

My girl exhausted her (very limited) resources for self-entertainment some time ago and I, being the aforementioned lazy, failed to provide new ones before the onset of tween-seasoned grumpiness. Let me assure you that I rectified that mistake with a haste formerly reserved for cartoon birds escaping not-so-smart coyotes.

Unfortunately, our post library is comparable with the local library in Waldorf. That is to say: craptastic. In fairness, it's probably an impressive establishment for a small military post, but my personal library standards are somewhat more... um, just "more".

Also, I've taken a keen interest in rounding out her reading list with things that don't involve teenaged magicians. Not that there's anything wrong with teenaged magicians, don't get me wrong, just that I'd like to see her stop calling out Lumos! with self-aggrandizing glee whenever she flips on a light switch.

To that end, I gave her two reading assignments during the move. The first being Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. Rowen had read a young adult biography of Anne Frank three years ago, and very nearly didn't forgive me for not telling her that everyone dies except Mr. Frank and "who cares about him, anyway!" But I thought the time was right for her to connect with the material on a more personal level, largely because I was just her age when I came across the book totally by accident myself, and it had a profound effect on me. Maybe because she was already familiar with the story, or because I was forcing it upon her and making her discuss it like some demon English teacher from hell WHO IS ALSO HER MOTHER, her response was decidedly more, "meh".

At the same time that Rowen was reading Diary..., I was rereading To Kill a Mockingbird in an effort to reacquaint myself with the material before I ~~lashed~~ ~~forced~~ gave it to my daughter to read. I about fell over from the wonderfulness of it. Every few chapters I'd have to stop and inspect the cover, going, "Is this seriously the same book I read in high school? I don't remember it being this funny-poignant-lyrical-sad-wonderful-fanbloodytastic!" I laughed through a great deal of it, teared up in a few places, and couldn't WAIT for Rowen to read it. To my delight, she loved it, too.

Which got me to thinking, what other classics have I forgotten about that I could shove down her throat, only to find that she actually likes the taste? I've already subjected her to a few, with varying degrees of success, and her school reading list has always been pretty impressive. Off the top of my head, here's what she's already consumed:

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Where the Red Fern Grows

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Charlotte's Web

The Wind in the Willows

The Secret Garden

The Giver

A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver

Treasure Island

James and the Giant Peach

Bridge to Terabithia

And a few others I can't call to mind at the moment. But she's at that weird stage between innocence and cynicism and these books represent a juvenile stage she's beyond, now. Selection is often hit or miss.

So I'd like to ask: What are the books that you remember from that time in your life? The stuff that hit you square in the gut and never left? (I should probably point out that I'm most likely going to read it before she does, so pointing out that this is also a thinly veiled plea for my own reading list would be redundant.)

C'mon, dazzle me with recollections of your awkward stage!

Peek-a-boo.

2009-03-13T18:29:00.004+01:00

Several wheels of the universe aligned for me today. Due to what good Karma I'm not sure, but as I'm not going to look a gift-Buddha in the mouth, I'll just tell you about it instead.

First of all, the sun appeared.

Some of you fortunates might take that for granted, but after nearly two solid weeks of gray, wet skies, I surely don't. I would have taken a picture, except that most of the sun's appearance occurred while we were driving at the speed of sound on the Autobahn in a rented volkswagon. While I'm sure the resultant streaks of light would have been pretty, I don't think they would have made a convincing argument for the presence of sunlight.

Secondly, some confluence of fortuitous scheduling gave Randy the day off, but not Rowen, so he and I took off for distant shopping points, where I made like the quintessential Army wife and picked up some Polish pottery. No, we did not go to Poland! But where we did go had a little store filled with the stuff and I couldn't pass up an adorable butter dish. It was a necessary purchase, I've been holding out for a cute butter dish for almost a year! Observe:

Adorable, yes?

Next, we went to the Garden Supply and Zoo in Schweinfurt. I'm sure the Germans mean something different by "zoo" since what it actually contained was garden and PET supplies, but there were live birds and hamsters there, so tomato/to-mah-to.

Anyway, I fully intended to go completely ape-shit in there and bring home a tropical rain forest, but through a mighty exertion of will power, restrained myself. (By the way, "will power" translates as "hovering husband", just in case you were wondering.) Also, I was distracted by this:

I made reference when we first arrived to noticing an orchid in nearly every kitchen window. I never did find out what it means, but it made an impression on me. I decided that I wasn't going to have the authentic German living experience until I got one, too. So there it is. And yes, I'm aware that it isn't an authentic orchid (it's some sort of crazy hybrid), but I've since noticed that orchids are less prevalent than I first thought, although there is a potted, usually flowering, plant in every kitchen window. Here's hoping I don't kill it.

Tomorrow, when the light out front is better, I'll show you what other live, green things I bought. This also assumes they don't die before then, which is entirely possible.

It's bigger on the inside.

2009-03-12T12:40:00.004+01:00

I hate purses. (Yet another sin against the stereotype of my gender.) I find them cumbersome and generally unattractive, not to mention easily misplaced or stolen. Not that I've ever had one misplaced or stolen, but that's because I'm so busy being neurotic and stressed over the whereabouts of my damn purse that I forget everything else. Like where I am or what I'm doing there. And let me just tell you; you do not want to find yourself going, "What's with all these flashing lights? And who are all those naked men?? Watch out for the angry badger! Oh, that's gonna leave a mark." Yeah. Not pretty.

Anyway, it's not bags in general I'm against, just purses. I like backpacks and messenger bags, totes and sporrans, and I'm especially fond of reusable shopping bags. I actually own a few of those, as opposed to a sporran which I do not own. (Because I knew you were wondering about that.) In Germany, however, such bags are actually a necessity. Stores charge anywhere from two to 25 € cents per bag for your purchases! For a country that's roughly the size of Oregon with 22 times the population, it's understandable that they'd want to keep their trash to a minimum.

Here's my contribution to that endeavor:

Innit cute? The longish rope handles loop right over my shoulder and the bag tucks under my arm and makes me feel like an angry, redheaded, cynical version of Heidi. Or Maria Von Trapp. Only without the yodeling.

Another thing the Germans do is a lot of recycling. I mean, A LOT. No matter where you are in the United States right now, I can guarantee you that you don't recycle a tenth of what the Germans do. Living on post does not exempt military families from following that standard. The recycling center for Askren Manor (the post housing development) is basically a self-service collection center, but it's operated by a smallish German man who speaks a fascinating blend of German, English and hand gestures that, paradoxically, gets easier to understand the angrier he gets. Because believe me, "stupid, filthy Americans" translates no matter what your mother tongue.

The sad part is, he has a point. When we first moved in and Randy walked over there on a Monday morning, he found the guy fighting his way through a towering HEAP of unsorted garbage just to get the gate open. First of all, the recycle center is NOT the dump. Secondly, there's a sign RIGHT ON THE GATE that says "Absolutely NO dumping". WTF?? Randy stayed several minutes to help him sort and dispose of everything, thereby crowning himself "Golden Boy" in the eyes of the operator. (When I heard this, I made sure to show up WITH Randy at the recycle center the next time, because I'm totally not above riding the coattails of his good impression. What?? It's who you know, people!)

Listening to people complain about the minimal garbage pickup (every two weeks), the "hassle" of recycling, or just seeing the evidence of garbage everywhere on the grounds, it occurs to me that Americans in general feel they're too good to touch their own trash. Like, once they don't have a use for it, it should just disappear from their sight. As if they aren't the ones that buy individually wrapped packages of cheese-flavored EVERYTHING that doesn't fly to the garbage can under the power of magic fairy wings!!

*pant*snort*pant*

Sorry. I get a little irate on the subject. In general, I think it boils down to an unwillingness to change anything about their lifestyle. Although, there might be a little ethnocentric 'tude cropping up, too, because I don't think these same people would let their American neighborhoods get this trashy. There's supposed to be a checks and balances system to deal with this problem, which I won't get into right now, but basically SOMEBODY has to be the bad guy and I think nobody wants to.

...wait for it...

'Til I moved in. heh heh.

It's like an ice cream dispenser in the shape of a grocery store.

2009-03-10T08:55:00.003+01:00

Shopping for consumables in Germany is like a scavenger hunt. Partly it's because I don't speak the language, and while milch doesn't provide much of a challenge, what in the hell is pute? (It's turkey. So is truthahn. One is male and one is female, though in the case of poultry I don't see why I should care.)

Where to purchase these items is sometimes just as much of a mystery. The two stores within walking distance turned out to be discount grocers, but not in the big, warehouse style we're used to in the States. Think, Dollar Store with rotating stock. At Aldi you can get Irish butter and a laptop, but I won't speak to the quality of either.

The larger grocers are more like what you'd expect from a super Wal-Mart with their vast selection of items completely unrelated to food, but even there the covered area is smaller.

(Actually, everything is smaller in Germany, so can we just get that out of the way now? If I say, "super Wal-Mart" what I mean is a super Wal-Mart vacuum packed into a dollhouse.)

Germans don't typically eat out of cans, so their dry/can -goods sections are really tiny. Most of the space in a grocery store is given over to a meat counter, and of that, probably 75% is pork. Their cold-cuts section outstrips anything I've ever seen, however. Imagine your local Safeway "deli" counter; multiply it by five, and fill it up with just meat. Holy bologna, Batman. You'd think this would be a nation addicted to laxatives, except that their consumption of cabbage probably balances it out. It's a wonder their colons don't pop out of their mouths waving little white flags.

There is one place downtown that is completely unique to me, and may become something of a rabbit hole into which I disappear on a regular basis. It's a wine shoppe, where everything from gourmet vinegars to 60 year old cognacs line the walls in casks and you supply your own bottle (or purchase a lovely, decorative one from the proprietor) to have them filled with oh-my-god-I-think-I-just-died-and-went-to-heaven (that vintage is 6,95 € per 100 ml, by the way.)

Obviously, I can't trek across town to the decent grocer all the time, so I do a lot of our shopping at the commissary. Which is just... yuck, but whatever, it's convenient. The "class six" (post equivalent of a liquor store) is not far, either, but their selection of German beers is sadly lacking (according to Randy, who would know). Their selection of wines isn't so bad, and last weekend we picked up a few bottles to have on hand.

It's hard to tell from the photograph, but the image of the castle is actually on the inside of the bottle, viewed from the "window" facing it. I'm going to fill the bottle with colored water and stick a gerbera daisy in it. The wine was okay. I'm not into rieslings very much because it's hard for me to remember it's not fruit punch, a fact which I always end up regretting the following morning.

Barking dogs.

2009-03-06T19:15:00.004+01:00

Orientation class is over. Here are some things I learned:

Evidently, if you're a German and under 70, a moment standing still is a moment wasted.
I am severely out of shape.
My feet hurt.
No, seriously. They really hurt.
All German bakeries were not created equal. But since all pastries will make you equally fat, you may as well splurge on the really good ones.
Like poppy-seed danish.
I hope I don't have to get drug-tested for opiates any time soon.
The nurses at our local German hospital are refugees from a communist Olympic shot-put team.
I know this because we got a tour, I wasn't admitted for anything.
So you can stop hyperventilating now. Mom.
Here are some pictures because I'm too tired to continue typing.

Messing around.

2009-03-03T19:31:00.001+01:00

It begins...

2009-03-03T15:37:00.004+01:00

Today I had the question I've been dreading most since arriving. That question which caused me to go "Buh?" when thrown at me with varying degrees of contempt 3 1/2 years ago, only to ignite a slow burn of intense resentment that has followed me ever since.

And that's rather silly, isn't it? It's like thinking up a come-back to an 8th grade insult 20 years after the fact, and letting it keep you up at night. And really, I like sleep way too much to let that happen.

So when my seat neighbor in the orientation class gave a little gasp upon seeing me fill out a form with my "maiden" name and confirming it with a question ("You kept your name?"), I had a surreal, melting watch moment where time kind of dilated. Old resentments flared out of habit, then just as quickly dissipated, most likely due to lack of caffeinated beverages and the resultant lethargy.

I mean, seriously. Am I going to go around getting angry every time a traditionalist crosses my path? That doesn't sound like something a lazy person would like to do. Furthermore, it does little to endear the cause of modernism and gender equality to said traditionalists when the "other side" clearly shows a tendency towards screaming rage. I've found, anyway.

So I replied with a nonchalant, "I surely did," and let the rest of the explanation that they not only didn't ask for but also didn't need slide like a liquid timepiece right out of my left ear hole.

I really didn't give it much more thought until I came home and saw this blog post by a non-traditional professional on the pros and cons of having hot pink hair in the office. Her paragraph about responding to questions was especially timely in a confirmation kind of way. I am an ambassador of modernism in a deeply traditional environment. I and others will just have to deal with it.

Which, by the way, will be much easier (though perhaps also more treacherous) with today's arrival of my coffee pot in hold baggage! Woot!

Notes from afield.

2009-03-02T13:32:00.003+01:00

Started spouse orientation class today. It's a week-long "know your area" kind of thing, and some of the information will be redundant (how to use the train system, for example) but I was able to glean some helpful factoids in just the first few hours today. Sat next to, and later had lunch with, an adorable ~~girl~~ young woman; a baby lieutenant's wife who is very conscious of her leadership role. She's kind of Type A and probably wouldn't appreciate me calling her "adorable", but I can't help it and she is.

After suffering the extra stinky brand of BS the recruiting command dishes out to the spouses, I was all ready to be cynical about the commander's "welcome briefing", but got a warm fuzzy feeling instead. It's a small class (out of 16 sign ups only 7 showed up) so the garrison commander was able to talk to us rather than at us. He was well prepared with notes and didn't try to shine us on about some of the problems here (post-related, not town-related), which I appreciated. Then we had a tour of the Army Community Service offices and personnel; everybody was very eager to make sure we utilize their services, everything from child care to financial services to exploring the area.

Speaking of which, we have a German national guide/host for the field-trip portion of our class at the end of the week, whose enthusiasm for her job borders on the manic. I guess that's preferable to a taciturn one, but I still might have to slip her a prozac before we go. Thursday is downtown Schweinfurt, complete with a tour of all the stores I've already been in to buy Rowen's school clothes. And Friday is a train ride to... yep, Wurzburg. Or Würzburg. Or Wuerzburg. Depending on your map.

Hopefully we'll catch one of the other major sites there and I can round out my Wurzburg album on Flickr with the product of another afternoon with my finger attached to the shutter button. And you guys can all go: Okay! We GET it, already!

One more note, in case anybody is wondering. I changed the layout of this blog yet again NOT because of my famously short attention span or natural aversion to pink, but because my landscape-format pictures wouldn't fit in the small column the other format provided. Blogger's photo-upload interface being as craptastic as it is, I've decided to use the HTML code from my flickr page in the body of the post directly, and that requires more room than the traditional column format provides. And OMG, I just used "interface" and "HTML code" in the same sentence, referring to my own actions. Dude! I have mad skillz!

"Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers!"

2009-02-28T18:03:00.008+01:00

Just got back from a lovely day trip to Wurzburg, a city about 40 km southwest of Schweinfurt. It's a bit larger than Schweinfurt, although that's probably not a fair comparison since poor Schweinfurt got the crap bombed out of it during WWII on account of the fact it was manufacturing ball bearings for the Nazi war machine. But Wurzburg does seem to be like Schweinfurt-plus. Plus a few churches, castles, biergartens, etc.

Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself! First of all, this was also the day that I took the new camera out and put it through its paces. And by that I mean that I pretty much pressed down on the shutter and didn't let up for four hours. And yeah, the results look about as manic as that sounds. But I'm happy to say that the camera behaved admirably and the battery didn't die, so it gets an A+!

First, we took the bus from the main stop, called the Rossmarkt, to the train station.

This is the bus stop. It's modern and geometric and full of natural light. You'll have to trust me when I say you're not missing anything with the train station. Eww.

This is one of the gorgeous churches just off the Marktplatz (central square) in Wurzburg. Sometimes it feels like an embarrassment of riches with regard to the architecture here. Everywhere you turn is something so utterly different from the states that your brain sort of cramps. Which means it completely shorts out when you see something as striking as this red and white masterpiece. Seriously. With smoke out my ears and everything.

This is the upper portion of the same church's doorway. Can I just observe here that if American churches advertised with NAKED PEOPLE at the entrance, attendance would go way up, if you know what I mean.

There's a lot to see in Wurzburg, but today we decided this would be our goal:

Marienberg Fortress. As with most things in Europe, what you see here is a relatively new structure on an "original site". I, for one, am glad they put something else here, since the "original site" is a BRONZE AGE SETTLEMENT and I'm thinking there wouldn't be a lot left to see. So this is only 800 years old, boo hoo. (That was sarcasm. The boo hoo part; the 800 years part is true.)

I don't want to inundate this post with photos... oh who am I kidding, yes I do. But I don't want to comment on every single one. So here are some shots of our walking journey and the only notable thing I have to say is, do you see how high up that fortress sits? Yeah. Walked it. And only died once.

Here's what we saw when we got there:

This is like the driveway entrance. Not a McMansion, that's for sure.

This little honey turned up all over the place. In this instance, right on the other side of that driveway entrance. (She's had a little work done, just under the chin. I'm thinking the money would have been better spent on a nose job, but who am I to judge?)

In Das Vaterland, angels don't mess around. Sorry this shot is a little out of focus, but that doesn't hide the fact that the broad up top is clearly driving a pike through some poor bastard's head. And smiling while she does it.

SOMEBODY hasn't shaved in a few... decades.

I think I may be in love with the doors, here. Never mind that they lead to dungeons.

Of the 70 pictures I took today, this one is my favorite. Even if it does look like she's packing grenades.

This is the walk I was facing to get back. And if you'll excuse me, I think I have to go die again.

(The complete set is on my flickr page, if you want to check them all out. No, not all 70 pictures. There are some shots that even a fancy new camera can't rescue from user error.)

Right on, dude.

2009-02-25T19:05:00.001+01:00

Would also work to tell people they sound like a (fill-in-the-blank). I'm all for the hyperbole, but that rarely serves me well in real life. Not that I don't keep trying, but still...

Reason #602 for marrying Randy.

2009-02-25T11:37:00.014+01:00

This post

contains clues as to its subject. And if you think

it's about hard water stains,

or the fact that clearly,

I need remedial lessons in dishwashing,

or about the SUM TOTAL of my cooking gear right now

(or yet another whine about "when is my stuff gonna get here"),

you are mistaken!

It's about this guy,

the newest addition to our camera family.

After much discussion on the matter, Randy and I decided not to purchase a second vehicle (i.e., one for me) while we're out here. We budgeted for a used compact, something that had probably seen many military families come and go (they are very nearly a dime a dozen out here). I still intend to get my German driver's license but our situation, between Randy's availability and public transportation being plentiful, cheap and readily accessible, just doesn't call for a second vehicle.

(Funny aside: DeDe is laughing and pointing right now because when she presented me with precisely the same argument last year regarding selling her own car, I seriously tried to hold an intervention for her.)

This has very little to do with cameras except that the decision left us with butt-load of cash. While I COULD have spent it all on the camera I was lusting after, I restrained myself to the newest model of the camera I was lusting after six years ago. Which, even being the newest model, is STILL cheaper than the base model was then. (Did you get that, or am I channelling Lewis Carroll here?)

Randy and I discussed it... well, he discussed it, I mostly argued against it which is a sure sign of how much I wanted it. When he had heard all my arguments, he conceded that they were valid points, all.

And then he said, "Also, I think you should just buy it."

I am not even aware that I am dead, and neither will you.

2009-02-25T08:29:00.003+01:00

'Kay, so I'm probably way behind the curve on this one, but I don't see where that has stopped me before, sooo...

My buddy, Irb, (I call him "my buddy" to make it seem less like I'm stalking him and more like we hang out - that works, right?) posted this link to DELICIOUS, LIBERAL BLOGGY GOODNESS posted by old ladies.

Margaret and Helen: it's my new favorite flavor. If you're not familiar, check 'em out. If you are familiar, please refrain from mocking my sad, undereducated ass.

Edited to add: It has since come to my attention that a large portion of the interwebs believes this blog is a fake; that is to say, NOT written by two old ladies but by a single disaffected college drop out who exceeded his lifetime limit on energy drinks sometime last year. To this accusation I have only one response, which I share with a certain alien-obsessed FBI agent: I WANT TO BELIEVE!

I'm a little teapot.

2009-02-23T17:03:00.003+01:00

On school uniforms:

It's rather disconcerting to enroll your child in a school which doesn't use English correctly. "Uniform" = one form. See how nice and neat that definition is? Kind of like an onomatapaeia: just one form. Not slap-dash, multiple permutations of vaguely homogenous clothing that the parent has to comb every German clothing store in town to find. That would be the incorrect definition of "uniform".

The only absolutes for the school "uniform" (yes, the quotes are necessary, this is a very loose term here) are no jeans and only collared shirts without logos. There's a list of colors, something about khaki, blue, black, white, navy, red, green, orange, burnt umber, red-violet but not blue-violet... I don't know. Rowen said she'd like to stick to black, khaki, blue and white and I said "would you like to be sainted?" Because fortunately she already had a couple of items that fit that bill and I was not required to mortgage my soul for an entirely new wardrobe. I did have to lease it out a bit, but that's okay, I probably wasn't using that part.

On smarty-pants children:

Granted, Maryland's accelerated learning program was unique. They start in the third grade and push the kids as hard as they can take it so that by the time they're in high school, they're taking college-level classes. This assumes, of course, that the same third grade child will be attending a Maryland high school, which assumes rather a lot, doesn't it?

Seems that I would be assuming rather a lot to expect the DOD school, a school which must accommodate children from all points on the compass, to have some sort of plan for dealing with this. Shyeah. Not so much. There's been multiple phone calls and reams of paper forms, not to mention Rowen's extreme lack of patience, trying to put her in the correct class levels for her abilities. I think we have it mostly straightened out now, but I'm reserving my opinion on what I think of the results until a little more time has gone by.

On bus passes:

Don't lose it, whatever you do.

On making friends:

The kids at this school are "okay". That's all I know, folks, my source is about as talkative on the subject as a hostile witness pleading the fifth.

On getting everybody out of the house for several hours at a go:

*siiiiigh*

I'll just be happy if, in this culture, wife beaters don't become formal wear.

2009-02-21T13:14:00.006+01:00

There is some argument, depending on your source, on whether Schweinfurt has anything to do with pigs or not. Literally, it's "Pig Crossing", so I'm thinking yes. But the literature I was reading didn't really embrace the idea. Then we started seeing these guys around town:

Not these EXACT guys (the one in the background is a girl), but I'm sure you've seen something similar in your town. In southern Maryland they did pelicans, in Sonoma county it was Snoopy; you get the idea. I don't think the citizens of Schweinfurt mind the pig connotations. In fact, I think they rather embrace it.

I'm learning a few language essentials, like the main train station (Hauptbahnhof) and the colloquial equivalent of "see ya" (tschus!) but I'm getting frustrated by the lack of basic vocabulary. I mean r-e-a-l-l-y basic. So I took matters into my own hands. For just under 4 euro:

Which is really going to help me the next time I need to get a lion in a tractor.

The bloom is not off the rose, but...

2009-02-20T11:55:00.003+01:00

...the rose just hasn't bloomed, yet.

There are some really wonderful things about living in Germany. I'm sure.

But at the moment were kind of stuck in limbo, which is making our experience less "Willkommen! Here's a beer! Dance the polka!" and more "Welcome to purgatory. Take a number and have a seat, we'll be with you in a few weeks."

Mirth181 has no sympathy for me because living in Europe is supposed to trump all ills, so he can just SKIP THIS POST.

But the truth is, adjustments are necessary. For instance, the in-unit washer and dryer I was so excited to see appears to have been engineered by elves. And not the kick-ass Lord of the Ring species, either. I'm talking Keebler elves. Who don't mind if garments spend two hours in the dryer and come out WET.

Also, after living in our last house where the shower just barely dripped on you, I never thought I'd complain about water pressure. And while I understand that some women pay good money for regular sessions of microdermabrasion, having my skin SANDBLASTED OFF on a daily basis is leaving me... sort of naked in a way that I just can't imagine is very healthy.

Loaner furniture. Hmm, where do I begin? How about with the fact that the master bedroom bed is barely a double. Let me repeat that: Barely. A. Double. Have I mentioned that my husband is 6'4"? And that we regularly argue over who stole the most space in our QUEEN sized bed back in Maryland? Needless to say, one of us is sleeping on the couch. The real kicker is we argue over that, too, because the couch is about 1,000 times more comfortable than the "bed" which I suspect was hijacked from Guantanamo.

Most of these concerns are domestic, and that's because we still have no transportation. I'm not sure when Randy's truck is due to arrive. Not that it matters because it's not like we're going to be navigating that beast down ANY town streets. Randy is picking up bus/train schedules today and I hope they will be easy to decipher. As we're walking a mile to the station. In the freezing snow. Uphill. BOTH WAYS.

I have two main consolations: high-speed internet access and german chocolate. But if you think that means that I'm basically sitting in front of my computer, without my skin on, in wet clothes, on the couch/bed, stuffing my face with chocolate...

...you're absolutely right.

Happy Blog-day to me.

2009-02-18T06:58:00.005+01:00

Today is the second anniversary of this blog, and the only profound thing I have to say is "I miss my coffee pot."

That's because it's before 7 am* and I'm seeing a very nervous 11 year old girl off to her first day at the new DOD (department of defense) school. I feel for her, I really do. Or rather, I would, if I wasn't numb from sleep deprivation and lack of caffeinated stimuli.

See, the thing is, there are two warring factions of my personality at work here: my scrooge-like refusal to pay good money for a new coffee pot when I know mine is coming via hold baggage in less than two weeks, and my deep-seated addiction to the roasted and brewed coffee bean.

Do not speak of instant to me, blasphemers! Nor of cold soda, which is like rolling over in the morning and puckering up to a dead fish. Morning coffee is a full sensory experience and cannot be substituted, especially for those of us whose personalities resemble the aforementioned dead fish before noon.

But it IS the second anniversary of this blog, so I'll make some sort of effort to be ~~witty~~ ~~intelligent~~ coherent for the occasion, and not just direct you back to my first post and call it a "special edition".

The first thing you'll note are some cosmetic changes, which I'm trying out for the sake of novelty and if my head doesn't explode from all the pink, I may actually like it. I'm particularly attracted to the cosmopolitan picture in the masthead. I think it reflects my new, "citizen of the world" status. (Evidently when you move to Europe, pomposity comes standard.)

Next are some content changes to the sidebar; nothing drastic, just minimizing the clutter. I debated whether or not to keep the blog roll, and am still undecided. I don't generate enough traffic to be a boon to anyone else, and it represents only a fraction of my feed reader. I dropped a couple of blogs that haven't updated in over 2 months and wasn't even fazed by the fact that those particular bloggers are related to me. Because I'm fearless. Or stupid.

But on this marked occasion, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I'm not in danger of letting this blog languish. That's because blogging fits me like the perfect pair of blue jeans. I know I just lost my three male readers with that simile, but bear with me a second. The best pair of jeans in a woman's closet are comfortable and stylish, casual and sexy. When she pulls them on, she feels like the best version of herself.

That's what blogging is for me: the best version of myself. Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cheer that there are other people out there who seem to agree (lurkers and blog-friends alike), but the salient point is that I love it enough that I'm not going to stop any time soon. Certainly not now when I have some excellent fodder for the next three years, not the least of which being that if I don't get my accent right, instead of saying "good night" in German I'll be saying "good naked."

*Update: this post was actually written over the course of two hours, during which I encountered a truculent tween, hungry husband, and the sound of my neighbors starting their day by running sack races across their hardwood floors. Needless to say, I took several breaks to bang my head into the nearest hard surface. Sometimes this was the heads of my family members.

Addendum

2009-02-16T10:44:00.002+01:00

I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who's been reading and commenting. I'm not really sure where this blog is going; only that I have this amazing new adventure to share and I think it's seven kinds of AMAZING that I actually have people to share it with.

Thanks for joining me on this crazy ride. You guys ROCK!

The eagle has landed!

2009-02-16T09:05:00.011+01:00

Oh, internet! How I have missed you! Seven whole days without your sweet nothings in my eyeballs, without your virtual universe of time-sucking applications! Let us never be parted again!

I think the most depressing thing about being away from my email for a week is coming back and finding 90% of my inbox is junk mail of one type or another.

Okay, so let's get caught up!

First of all, and most importantly, we got housing! Randy and I discussed the pros and cons of on-post vs. economy living and while there was a long list of both for each, ultimately there were three or four things we just couldn't compromise. A lot of these had to do with the fact that we have no transportation until Randy's truck gets here: NEXT MONTH. When the lady at the housing office, whom I suspect of having a German real estate market agenda because she pushed hard for a private rental, couldn't guarantee even one of those things, let alone all of them, she found us a two bedroom apartment in post housing.

From the outside, post housing typically looks like the projects. From what I understand, oftentimes the inside fares little better. However, we seem to have lucked out and the first unit we were offered was a first floor, newly renovated space. I know, I know... "newly renovated" can mean anything from "fresh shelf liners" to "there's a wall still missing". But in our case means new paint, tile and kitchen cabinets. (The garbage is ours... that's right, 10 minutes after I get the key, I start mucking up the place. My mother is SO proud.)

Random fact: German housing (which the army housing qualifies as) is made of concrete, not wood, which makes it air tight and smell like feet if you don't air it out for at least 10 minutes every day. But the windows are HUGE and AMAZING and open in TWO DIRECTIONS, so the airing-out process is easy to accommodate. Added bonus: vast amounts of natural light. I might die of happiness. (Note the borrowed furniture, which is ghetto-fabulous.)

The kitchen is miniscule, but no smaller than our Maryland duplex and has enough built-in storage to make a squirrel jealous. Another pro of on-post housing? DUAL VOLTAGE! Which means that my beloved KitchenAid stand mixer is NOT just an expensive door stop! (Yes, there's such a thing as transformers, but they're large and expensive and look vaguely menacing, like alien pods.)

Can we just take a moment to observe the cathedral-like quality of the bathroom? Check out the tub. (To give you an idea of scale, Rowen is 5' tall.) I may never get out of it. No really, I'm lounging in the empty tub right now. JUST BECAUSE I CAN.

Of course one of the downsides to letting the army pay for your abode is they don't believe in extra rooms. This means that the open invitation still exists to everyone we encouraged to come visit, but you're gettin' the couch. Or the tub, because seriously, IT'S THAT BIG.

We finally got out and about this weekend in a rented car and discovered something VERY important. If Randy and I are to stay married, we must invest in a GPS, right-the-hell-now.

Schweinfurt currently has a "winter market" going on in it's town square, which is adorable. There are about a bazillion places for Americans to spend their Euro and I plan on visiting them ALL. Saturday, however, we confined ourselves to brautwurst and ice skating.

Sunday, we took a trip to Bamberg and got lost looking for a parking space, which was amusing for approximately the first three seconds; not so much the next 29 minutes, 57 seconds. Future adventuring endeavors will probably include A PLAN.

Also, I think I found my penguins. I'm pretty sure these are mine. They are, after all, guarding the wine!

The sky is falling!

2009-02-09T15:31:00.003+01:00

This morning Rowen called me to the window to see flurries, which were unique by virtue of the fact that they were German flurries.

You know that phrase, "lowering skies"? It always makes me think of "glowering skies". Whatever term, we're pretty much living it right now. It looks as if the slate-gray clouds are hovering just out of reach of the treetops, frowning sternly down upon us. Which also seems very German to me, but that's just a hypothesis because I haven't actually made it into town yet.

There was a brief adventure along a walking/biking trail along the outside of the post, a path we were obliged to take because the only entrance to the building we needed faced the street and the conveniently placed gate RIGHT NEXT TO IT was CLOSED. Anyway, the path cut behind the most interesting little individual fenced plots, with miniature cottages (really just glamorous sheds). Each plot was like a back yard, and most tenants (?) had sectioned them off into half lawn, half garden. Serious gardening, though, like the kind my mother-in-law with a masters in botany and 25 years of her own landscaping business does.

It took us a while to decide on an explanation for these plots. There were no houses and the "sheds", while adorably done up as miniature cabins/cottages, weren't sufficient living quarters (even for Europeans). Near as we can tell, they're leased yards for folks who haven't room for their own. Of course, this is precisely the kind of tale that is best illustrated with PHOTOGRAPHS but guess who forgot her camera? I didn't expect to be leaving the post, and I am not going to take pictures of the commissary. Although clearly, that's not an excuse.

Today, Randy is taking care of more in-processing that does not require my presence, although there was a brief interruption in my lounge-about time when we took Rowen to get her replacement ID card. In that brief period, Randy so overloaded my brain with the information he'd obtained in the previous three hours that my ears are still smoking.

His exuberance is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's wonderful to see his naturally energetic, optimistic personality return after being subsumed under the bitter disappointment recruiting put him through. On the other hand: SLOW DOWN! Jumping subjects like a jackrabbit on crack is not an effective way to get me to remember stuff! I have to hold three people's social security numbers in the easily accessed part of my brain! It's crowded up there!

When he returns from the second portion of today's in-processing, we're going to look at cell phones and talk about living arrangements. Off-post housing is looking like a strong contender. Preferably near a pastry shop.

Chicago to Frankfurt.

2009-02-07T17:47:00.004+01:00

Ah, day 2 under a German sky, which looks disappointingly like every other sky I've ever seen. Where are the special effects? The ripple dissolve? The clouds shaped like pastry?

What's that? They breath air here, too? And put their blue jeans on one leg at a time? So, I guess no lederhosen, then. Right. Moving on.

Where were we in the grand travel adventure? Oh yeah, O'Hare.

We had just a few minutes over an hour to make it from gate D-something to C-something when we landed in Chicago. Since we were neither delayed nor facing a huge travel crowd, we had time to suck down a snack before boarding the international flight. It was great fun to hear the announcements in both German and English. At least I think it was English; it was delivered in a thick French accent. Nobody understood why that gave me the giggles.

The flight itself was nice enough, given it's nearly eight hours in coach. I was hoping we'd get some sleep, but I found it impossible to get comfortable enough in the second half of the flight to actually snooze. Rowen caught a few z's on my shoulder in the last hour or so, but that was it. They fed us twice and we had personal screens at each seat to see a variety of movies. I'm sorry this paragraph is so boring, but that's what the flight was like.

Landing in Frankfurt at 5:40 am was a relief. It was dark and rainy, so not much to report there. The bathrooms are really clean, though, and smell like a fruit basket. That was kind of off-putting, actually.

Our first liaison met us at baggage claim and took us to a staging area where we were one of the first soldiers/families to arrive. We stowed our luggage in their secure room and wandered off for coffee since in-processing wouldn't commence for at least two hours.

Returning to the staging area (also a walk-thru area from the Sheraton to the terminal) at the appointed time, we watched several soldiers and military families stream in and harry the poor specialist behind the counter. He was really on the ball, though, and I watched him field questions, give instructions and answer two phones at a time with no small amount of impressed awe.

Finally, Randy was included in the group to go "upstairs" and in-process. Most families went with their soldier, but since it wasn't required that I go and Rowen was already drooling on my leg where she fell asleep, I opted to stay put in the staging area. I had a comfortable seat and a book; it seemed like the thing to do.

It seemed less like the thing to do as the minutes turned into hours and every German who walked by stared at my kid like she'd disembarked an alien spacecraft. Families who arrived well after us left with their sponsors or for their buses, their children and pets making a merry parade before me while sheer exhaustion was making me imagine that they'd told Randy his orders were a mistake and sent him back to the States. Immediately. Without us. Did I mention I was really tired?

As it turns out, they were not telling Randy his orders were a mistake. I hope he blogs about his experiences in that little room, though, because what ELSE they weren't doing made for an interesting rant. Suffice it to say here, though, that it was a "process" for sure.

Finally, we loaded our luggage on the bus and climbed to the top level of the double-decker style vehicle to escape the family with 2 small boys, a baby, a golden retriever and a wife who'd had enough. The bus seats reclined way farther than the plane seats and I slept in two, 45-minute intervals, nearly the entire ride. I did catch a glimpse of rolling hills dusted with powdery snow, but the light was too hazy to get a clear picture. Also, the widows of the bus hadn't been cleaned since it rolled off the assembly line, approximately twenty years ago. We passed through one small village where I noticed every kitchen window had a potted orchid on the sill. Not sure what that's about, but will report as soon as I find out.

Our arrival on post went so smoothly as to be unworthy of writing about. Besides which, I was so burnt out and spacey I really don't remember much about what happened. Reservations at the post hotel (henceforth to be referred to as "guest housing") had been made for us in advance, and we unpacked enough of our luggage to take showers, put on clean clothes, and then stare blankly at the wall while we tried not to blubber. Or perhaps that was just me. In any case, we forced ourselves to stay up a few more hours so we could go to bed "on time" and hopefully get rid of the jet lag. I made it to 8:15 pm.

No family in-processing is done on the weekend, so we have a couple of days to recover before the go-here and sign-that and hurry-up-and-wait stuff begins. Fun!

Jet. L-a-g-g-e-d.

2009-02-06T17:03:00.002+01:00

We have arrived in Germany. I have no pictures for to share with you. This is because at 5 pm central European time, I am staring down the barrel of my 28th hour of wakefulness and my brain is totally friggin' fried!

Our journey began the morning of 5 February in arctic temperatures. Seriously. The wind chill was so bad loading our luggage into the rental car that my hands went numb in 4.8 seconds. Not coincidently, this is approximately how long it took me to decide to PUT ON MY DAMN GLOVES.

Randy and I had worked out a plan whereupon I would drop him and Rowen and our six pieces of luggage off at the terminal, then proceed to turn in the rental car and catch a shuttle back. This process went effortlessly. Which should have been my first clue...

We approached the ticket counter with a copy of our travel confirmation email, Randy's orders, and naive smiles. None of which will get you to Germany if the f@#%ing government contracted travel company didn't pay for your tickets when they reserved them.

Just take a moment to dwell on what it might be like to SHUT OFF YOUR LIFE in the states in preparation for a move to a foreign country, and then be told that you aren't going anywhere.

I'm not going to go into a bunch of detail about all the ways this couldn't be fixed. Suffice it to say there was one way it could be fixed, and hopefully the government will reimburse the price of our tickets.

Okay, that's all for now because I wasn't joking about the jet-lagged thing. Tomorrow: adventures in concourse-hopping at Chicago's O'Hare Airport! Stay tuned...

There is no such thing as a passenger thong.

2009-02-04T15:22:00.003+01:00

Snow. Lots of snow. Lots of icy snow. Dammit.

The only reason this is truly a problem is because the rental car we obtained two days ago... not the rental car we had reserved, which was a full size sedan or "equivalent" but apparently the rental company considers a Honda Accord "equivalent" which causes me to consider them "full of shit"... the rental car we obtained has nearly bald front tires. A fact which wasn't brought to my attention until my husband, who had already pitched a fit at the rental counter over the "equivalent" matter, felt the need to point out further flaws in our business dealings with the rental company. Let it be known that this was my FIRST attempt at renting a car, and although I did a fair amount of on-line research, I've since learned many valuable lessons. The primary among them being that rental car companies are run by the anti-Christ.

Our hotel stay has been satisfactory, however, and is a measure of luck I hope will hold out one more night as we prepare to check into another hotel of the same company closer to the airport. As we prepare to drive over lots of icy snowy roads (dammit) to the hotel closer to the airport. And although there have been some glitches in The Big Move - 2009 so far, I certainly can't say it's been anywhere near to disaster level. But please don't spread that around, since I also believe in the power of the jinx.

Tomorrow we fly from Baltimore to Chicago to Germany. (Yes, that's at least a little bit backward, but it's a government-sponsored trip, so what do you expect? I figure the reasoning is something like, the military purchases blocks of civilian flights in an advance contract, and must send its travelers to where those flights as contracted. It's not a huge deal, except that we're flying out of O'Hare. Yuck.) We're scheduled to arrive around 5 am on the 6th (German time... what time zone is that, anyway?) in Frankfurt, and I was hoping to include some pics of our flight on my next post, but it's going to be pitch dark, so I think I'll just save the space. Perhaps I can get a bleary, jet-lagged shot of the Frankfurt airport. I'll try for a candid shot of an annoyed customs official. Depending on how annoyed, maybe I'll share one of the airport polizei!